


Doorways

by TenSixths



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Erik is not a good parent, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Mild child neglect, Single Parents, but he is trying, not that that ever worked
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-03-31 22:17:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 25
Words: 24,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13984479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSixths/pseuds/TenSixths
Summary: Christine is gone, but cannot be forgotten. Her daughter lives on and is bound to trouble Erik's every waking hour (and those very few spent sleeping). Yet she alone might be able to keep his madness at bay.





	1. Chapter 1

Erik stood in the doorway and looked in on the scene. He had found himself in this position quite often as of late. It was where he had been just after the baby was born and Christine was holding it lovingly to her breast. Where he stood when Christine sang the crying thing to sleep at night.

All these things had been his. Now he lurked in doorways watching his wife and her child.

_Our child, she said._

_Your child, he replied._

_Émilie, she insisted._

Like always, she looked over her shoulder, catching him where he stood. He hadn’t made a noise, but she could sense him. Her hand came out to invite him into the room. For a moment, he gazed at it, then at the bundle on the floor, still too small and pink to be lovely.

Of course, she had not inherited his face, so she was beautiful. The fear he had felt, the guilt that had preyed upon him, all that had consumed him in the months his wife had grown was for nothing. Both she and Nadir had attempted to talk sense into him then, but it was useless. He was more emotional than Christine though he only cried at night when she was asleep. But he could hardly bear to touch her.

And here was the child, but the fear and guilt had not left. He feared _it_ , the child. And he was ashamed for having trapped these two sources of light in a dungeon with him. Jealousy, as well, that Christine was busy with her baby and too tired to sing with him, talk with him, love him. Annoyance when it cried endlessly. And brief, brief moments of happiness, delirious and maddening happiness, when he imagined his future with his wife and child walking in the park on Sundays. Beside him.

His gaze drifted back to Christine’s hand and he felt his own twitch in longing to reach for her.

He signed and turned away, seeking out his organ instead.

When he came to bed, she startled awake, a habit she had picked up when her baby was born. She settled, though, when she saw it was him, and wrapped herself wearily about his thin frame when he lay down. She had been tired lately, but tonight she could hardly stay awake to kiss him goodnight. Immediately she was asleep on his shoulder.

Until the baby began crying, he laid patiently beside Christine, running gentle fingers along in her arm and burying his hand in her curls. Even when it cried, he held out several moments, hoping it would stop. It did not.

“Christine,” he whispered, shaking her. “Your baby is crying.”

She groaned and rolled further into his side.

“Please go get her. She’s hungry.”

“No.”

“Please go hold her for a while. Sing to her. Just for a moment, Erik.”

“No. Erik will not touch Christine’s child.”

The thing had been with them nearly five months and Erik had only touched it twice.

Once the night she had been born. He had lifted her out of the cradle – the one Christine had insisted he build – while his wife slept and held her in one arm, a long forgotten phial of morphine in the other hand. All the while, he contemplated a lie to tell Christine the next morning. But the baby started crying. Erik left before Christine could rouse herself.

The next time had been several weeks later. He had lit a single candle and sat over the cradle, watching dreamily as her pink lips opened and closed and those delicate eyelids twitched. He had grown to like watching her sleep. She was beautiful and that made him happy. Christine deserved only beautiful things. He had gone too far though, and tried to brush the baby’s cheek with a feather-light touch. Immediately she woke crying and Christine had to comfort them both – the babe at her breast and Erik clutching at the skirt of her nightgown swearing incoherently that he had not meant to hurt the child.

“Nonsense, my love,” she murmured to him, her hand resting atop his head. “She was only startled.”

“I frighten her,” he wailed.

“She’s a baby. Everything frightens her.” She removed her hand from him so she could hold the child upright before her. In the voice she reserved only for speaking to it, she cooed, “Won’t you quiet for your papa? He would like to get to know you, too, you know. Come Émilie, papa will hold you now.”

“No.”

And he hadn’t held her since, nor would he. So Christine dragged herself out of the bed, lit a candle, and left the room. Erik followed.

By the time he reached the little nursery, the baby was quiet, nursing contentedly. It was Christine crying now, silent tears coursing down her cheeks. In the light of the candle, her skin was grey and her eyes dull. She had lost weight after the birth, becoming thinner and frailer than she had been. This wasn’t tiredness. She was succumbing to the same darkness that had already claimed him.

When the baby was safely back in her crib, Erik strode forward to take his wife by the arms and guide her back to bed, but she would not move.

“Why won’t you touch her?” she whispered. “For a child to go without her parent’s touch…How can you?”

He felt her accusation sharply and responded just as harshly, “Erik’s mother never touched him.”

The tears returned. “But you are better. Please, Erik, you cannot hurt her. She needs your love, like I do.”

“Come, you must rest.”

She was too weak to resist this time when he pulled her along. Again, as soon as her head was against her pillow, her wan skin nearly the same color as the case, she was asleep.

Erik cursed himself. He left her there to rest and went to smash things in the parlor. A few broken trinkets were hardly satisfying though, so he brought terrible melodies into being on his organ and let them fade into the night. How had he not noticed how poorly his wife was? He was never able to give her enough, to give her what she needed to be happy and love him. A child hadn’t been enough. Now she wanted him to love the child too. All the while she was wasting away and he had not noticed. She had been ill after her pregnancy, but he attributed it to excitement and lack of rest. He had fixed both problems and she had improved. But now, she was again unwell and he had not noticed. He had not seen from the doorways he lurked in.

She was worse the next morning. He woke her when the baby cried, but when she rose, her strength failed her and she collapsed into his arms.

“I will get a doctor,” he said after returning her to the bed.

“No, please, don’t leave me.”

He sat down at her side. Her skin, already warm against his corpse-like chill, burned him now and sweat-moistened hair clung to her cheeks. When she fell asleep again, Erik fetched cool clothes to place against her forehead. Then he ran for the same doctor that had delivered her daughter into the world. The man was clinical and would not ask questions so long as he was paid.

It was an hour before he could return to Christine and she was no longer in bed when he brought the doctor in. Instead, he found her in the nursery, on the floor with the baby in her lap.

“Oh angel!” she exclaimed, not even looking at him. “You’ve come at last.”

Turning to the doctor, who occupied Erik’s usual spot in the doorway he said, “Fix her, won’t you?”

“Take her to the bed,” the man replied calmly before leaving to set up his supplies.

At his wife’s side, Erik whispered, “I will take you to the bedroom. Hold tight to Émilie.”

Then he lifted them both in his arms.

It was an infection, the doctor said, that caused the fever. He gave Christine laudanum and Erik instructions for feeding the baby until the mother recovered. He took Émilie back to the nursery. Then he left.

Erik sat beside Christine all night. If the baby cried, he didn’t hear it. He didn’t hear anything until Christine murmured in the dim candle light, “Do you love me?”

He felt his heart clench. Never had she asked that before. He asked almost daily, but she had never needed his reassurance.

“Yes, I love you,” he cried, clutching her to him. With his ear over her heart, he could hear the raged breathing. “My angel, my life, I love you.”

“If you love me, Erik, you will take care of Émilie. You will love her like you love me because she is ours. Promise, Erik?”

He raised his head and Christine took off his mask.

“A kiss?” he asked, his voice cracking on the hopeful note.

She obliged though it seemed to take all her strength.

“Do you promise, my love?” she repeated after he had lowered her head back to the pillow.

“Yes,” he said finally, grudgingly. “I promise.”

It was the last of his words she heard.


	2. Chapter 2

Nadir found him. Erik had no idea how much time had passed, or even that time had passed at all as he lay beside Christine, her skin for once as cold as his.

But suddenly the Persian flung open the door to find the two of them in a passionless embrace on the bed. He said nothing.

“Go away, Daroga,” said Erik after a moment. “I would like to die in peace with my wife.”

“Erik, where is Émilie?”

Without answering, Erik pulled Christine closer and whispered, “Don’t listing to the fool, my darling. Émilie is fine, just as I promised.”

“Erik!”

The baby began to cry and Nadir vanished. He returned later – an hour, a day, the next year, Erik neither knew nor cared. Only this time he held a squalling infant swaddled in a clean white blanket. This made his presence even more detestable.

“Where is the food for her, Erik?”

There was no answer.

“Damn you, Erik, get out of bed and care for your child.”

The only thing at hand was the porcelain mask, so Erik threw it with all his might at the Daroga. It missed and shattered against the wall. Nadir left again.

When he next returned, he came alone. Erik watched without raising his head as Nadir walked about the room, gazing first at Erik’s prone form and then Christine’s body.

“How did it happen?” he asked.

Erik answered with absolute calm, as if he spoke of the weather. “An infection, from the birth.”

“I’m sorry, Erik.”

Glistening tears ran down the rivulets in the twisted flesh of Erik’s face.

“We must bury her, my friend. She cannot stay here.”

Instantly, Erik was on his feet, hands in his hair, clawing at his face. “Why must everyone try to take my wife from me? My wife! You are just like the rest of them, Daroga.” As he spoke, he advanced on the Persian who refused to retreat even when Erik’s hands were about his neck. “She will not leave me! She promised. She promised to stay. Why do you try to take her from me?”

“She’s already gone--”

The scream was inhuman, ravaging vocal chords and innocent ears, echoing on stone and water and cold, empty air. It was too terrible, as ugly as his voice was beautiful, as ugly as his death mask face – Nadir threw his hands over his head in a futile attempt to hide from the sound.

When his breath expired, Erik was hanging on Nadir’s lapels, too limp to continue strangling him.

Naturally, his cry had woken the baby who now gave her own plaintive wail, almost as terrible as her father’s. Erik drew himself up at the noise, nearly pulling Nadir down as he did so, and placed his face a breath away from the Persian’s.

“I will kill that child!’ he shouted and Nadir flinched. “I will throw it in the lake! It killed her. She cared too much for it and it killed her! It took my wife from me! Where is it, Daroga? Bring it here and I will snap its neck!”

“Think of what you’re saying, man! Your child!”

“Now, Daroga. Don’t keep me waiting.”

“Christine’s child? What would she say?”

The distraught man broke again, returning to kneel beside the bed and press frantic kisses to Christine’s dead hand.

“My love,” he gasped between kisses, “I would never. It is Erik’s fault! Erik is to blame. He put the baby in you. He was blind. Please forgive your poor Erik! You mustn’t worry, my dear. Christine made Erik promise to care for her child and Erik will keep his promise.”

Nadir looked away from the pair with an expression of mixed disgust and compassion. To the doorframe, Nadir said, “I am going to fetch an undertaker. I recommend you bathe while I am gone and find another mask.”

\----------

The undertaker had been told to say nothing if he did not want to leave in a coffin himself. So he gave no reaction when the masked man – now stiffly dressed and groomed – opened the door and bowed them inside.

“Welcome, messieurs,” he said evenly. “If you’ll follow me, I’ve moved her to the bedroom.”

He meant his own bedroom, they soon saw, and the undertaker just caught himself from gasping upon seeing the open wooden coffin in the center of the room. Inside, Erik had arranged Christine to show her living beauty even in death. Her hands were folded over her white gown, her curls splayed about her peaceful face. She was surrounded by dozens of pure red roses.

“She shall be buried beside her father. Monsieur Khan will direct you there. I do not wish to attend. Good day.”

“Would you like to sing her requiem?”

Erik glanced over his shoulder, already halfway out of the room.

“No, Daroga, I do not wish to sing.”

Before any more could be said, Erik had entered his study and locked the door behind him.

\----------

Nadir entered tentatively when he returned that evening, only to find Erik sitting easily on the parlor sofa and gazing at the bookshelf opposite. Without a word, the Persian slipped into the kitchen to prepare tea. Of course Erik didn’t drink the cup Nadir poured him. But it felt familiar, as did their patient silence. Erik broke it first.

“The madness is gone.”

Nadir glanced up at him.

“I have tried so hard to escape back into it, but everything is sharp and clear. I treasured Christine for taking it. I had rather hoped it would return when she left. But it seems I am denied even that relief.”

“What will you do now?”

Erik’s returned gaze was confused.

“Have you considered sending a letter to Mademoiselle Daáe’s little friend from the ballet? The little Giry girl. And her mother.”

“What about them?”

“They can take Émilie. Or perhaps they know someone who can.”

The man was on his feet again, sending the china tea service flying. One long, bony finger trembled in Nadir’s direction.

“You will not take her from me!” he screamed, his voice like the shattered china. “No one will take her! Erik promised his wife that he would love her. No one else!”

“You are not capable of raising her on your own. You’re too frightened to even touch her.”

“On the contrary, _my friend_ , I will love her more deeply than any father has ever loved his child. I will not leave her. I will not let her _die_.”

Nadir could not ignore the direction of the last remark. His eyes went wide at the cruelty of it, never mind that it came from a distraught and desperate man. The pain of Reza’s death, of Rookheeya’s death, recalled so neatly in Erik’s current situation, was years old and still too raw.

“Let us not forget which of us actually killed my son,” he said coldly.

Then he rose and strode from the little lakeside house, leaving his masked friend alone with his crying infant.


	3. Chapter 3

For the longest time, Erik stood over her crib. She had stopped crying when he fed her and now gazed back at him in silent curiosity while chewing on a wooden rattle.

She was so beautiful. The most beautiful child he had ever seen. Perfect fingers, perfect little toes, perfect face. She was so very alive in the heat of her skin and glow in her eyes. Christine’s eyes. Everything about her was Christine. She could not be his child. She was too beautiful.

But then everything he created was beautiful. His buildings, his music, his chaos. His daughter. Yes, she must be his.

So then why couldn’t he touch her?

Madeline had not been able to touch him because he was hideous. How amusing now, that he could not touch his child because she was beautiful.

The Daroga had been right. He would ruin her.

With a sigh, he left the nursery.

\----------

He touched her only out of necessity, to feed her, to change her, to move her from her crib to the floor. Still she squirmed at it and while he hated her for it, he yearned ever more to be able to comfort her.

For when she started crying in the night, not out of hunger or discomfort, but simply a need to be held, he could not help. He could only stand there and sob. When he did lift her into his arms, on the few occasions when desperation made him brave, it did not good.

It seemed Émilie had sensed something had happened to her mother. She cried far more often now. Endlessly sometimes. So often that she began to make herself sick. Upon noticing this, seeing those green eyes dulled in the same way he had failed to notice in Christine’s, Erik collapsed against the bars of Émilie’s crib.

Oh, but it would be easier, wouldn’t it? Émilie could follow her mother, Christine could be with her beloved child in death, and he would be alone again. As it was meant to be. He was sure he could not join them in heaven.

If he lost her, he would have nothing left.

The pure panic overtook him, ruthlessly stole all other thought. Émilie was silent now, wearied from her past days, but he pulled her into his arms anyway and fled the nursery and the dark thoughts there. He retreated into Christine’s room. Even after its week without an occupant, it was still bright, still held her memories, her light. He relished the dark safety of his cellar home, but this child was Christine’s, and Christine loved the light. Was the light. Émilie must be safe here.

“Please, my angel,” he wailed, his voice lost amid the child’s cries. She had started as soon as he cradled her against him. “Tell Erik what he must do. He cannot lose her.”

He looked down at the baby, held against his chest the way Christine had shown him, her face scrunched in misery.

Raising his head, he jumped to find his masked face gazing blankly back at him from the vanity mirror.

Of course! Émilie was afraid. With her baby’s intuition, she knew she was being held by a monster. She knew what lay behind the mask, though she had never seen it. She knew what the skeleton hands had done, though she had not yet been alive, not yet been thought of when those deeds had taken place. She knew and she feared it, was repulsed by it.

Erik could not even hold his own child!

His wife had lied. When he had laid a hand against her abdomen and felt baby Émilie kicking, he had said with a false lightness, “Here will be another little child for me to frighten in the dark.”

“Oh, Erik,” Christine said with a sparkling laugh. “You mustn’t try to frighten him!” She had promised him a son then, who would play the organ and build palaces like his father.

“I won’t have to try, my dear,” he said, even the pretend mirth gone.

At that she rose and tried to embrace him though she was really too big to do so with any grace. “Never say that! Never again, my love! He will love you very much, just as I do. Children always love their parents.”

Except, it seemed, when Erik was their father. Then they were disgusted.

And Erik, he realized, could never be a real father. He would kill his child as he had killed his wife.


	4. Chapter 4

Nadir came back. Erik’s remarks had cut, but then, tact could not be expected from such a man. Especially in such a state. Nadir had forgiven him always, if reluctantly and inexplicably, and he would forgive him now.

Besides, he wanted to make sure Émilie still lived. Christine had often proclaimed that Nadir would be the child’s godfather if she had her way. Neither Erik nor Nadir’s religion would permit such a thing, but the Persian felt fond responsibility nonetheless.

He found Émilie asleep in her crib and Erik asleep on the divan. The baby looked alright, healthy if a bit pale.

Erik looked terrible. Worse than usual rather.

He had removed his mask to sleep and the face below had somehow become more awful to look upon. The deformed features were drawn and the uneven cheekbones protruded further than normal. And then there was the fact that he had slept right through Nadir walking into his house. The great assassin, sleeping on his parlor sofa because his daughter had tired him out. Nadir tried and failed to stifle his laugh.

Instantly there were hands on throats and death threats. Nadir accepted all patiently until Erik turned away, panting heavily. As he stalked off to retrieve his mask and tie it behind his head, Nadir commented mildly, “No more lasso, my friend?”

“Too many surprises with a wife and child.”

“And I thought you loved surprises.”

Erik turned his blank face to his guest. “I suppose you’ll be wanting tea?”

“Please.”

When Erik returned with the tray, it was to find Nadir with Émilie perched on his knee, grabbing at his beard and babbling happily. Erik gave them a glare before sitting down opposite.

“How old is she now?” asked the Persian.

“Seven months next week.”

Nadir turned back to the child, speaking now in that same, lilted voice Christine had used with her child, and said, “Émilie, you’re growing up so fast. You’ll be a young lady before your papa knows it. Can you smile for me?” She didn’t smile, but reached confusedly for his lips. When she reached them, Nadir kissed each fingertip and earned himself a delighted squeal before the little hand withdrew. Then he stuck out his tongue.

“What are you doing?”

The two spared Erik barely a glance. “Making faces at her--”

“I wonder what she would think of the faces I could make.”

“And talking to her,” Nadir continued, poking Émilie’s stomach so she giggled. “And making her laugh. She’s a cheerful baby. Reza was never so easy to smile.”

“That’s only because you’re here. When it’s just me, she won’t stop crying.”

“Have you tried--”

“She doesn’t like me to touch her.” It was almost perfectly dispassionate, but he’d said it too quickly and the smallest note of despair and betrayed hurt could not be hidden.

“So sing to her.”

“I will not sing.”

“Talk to her at least. You do talk to her, don’t you? She needs to hear your voice. It will calm her and that is how she will learn. She will learn what you teach her.”

“Teach her, yes.”

At that point, Émilie grew impatient at the lack of attention bestowed on her and let out an indignant scream. Nadir obligingly returned to her games and Erik returned to his stoic silence. It seemed the Daroga had come for no other purpose that to play with his child so Erik volunteered no conversation until Émilie quietly slipped into sleep.

“Make yourself useful, Daroga,” he said then, rising to collect the unused tea things. “Go find the Giry woman and tell her I am hiring her services again. Once a week she is to provide me with supplies from a list I will give her. But say nothing more.”

“Very well.” Nadir sighed and set the sleeping infant on the sofa and stood. “I shall come again at the end of the week.”

“I suppose you must since you insist on prying into my…our affairs.”


	5. Chapter 5

Because Nadir had left his daughter sleeping on the sofa, Erik now faced the arduous task of returning her to her crib. He put it off as long as he could, unwilling to see her tears after witnessing the laughter she’d bestowed upon the Persian.

Finally he pulled on his gloves and draped his cloak across his arms. Perhaps if she could not feel his death skin, she would not wake up and cry at the sight of him.

But she did wake. As soon as she was cradled at his chest, her eyes fluttered open and she fixed him with a deep gaze. Only because he could remember his own childhood and the sentience he had felt even then did he believe her warm eyes to hold understanding.

As if he was about to engage a venomous snake, he raised his free hand and nudged her stomach with a gloved finger.

Émilie stared back but did not cry.

“Damn that man,” Erik swore softly. Then he saw his daughter’s eyes go wide at his voice. Hesitantly he continued, “Always meddling in our affairs and sticking his nose where it isn’t wanted.”

Émilie smiled in ignorant agreement.

Erik felt his knees give way. Only at the last moment did he manage to keep the two of them from collapsing to the floor.

His daughter was in his arms and she was _smiling_. At him.

It made him brave, deliriously so, and he bowed his head to kiss her forehead. The mask was in his way, but the kiss pressed it more firmly against his mouth. The answering pressure beneath his ribs was nearly unbearable.

When he raised his head, she squirmed in his arms for a moment. A sick bile rose to his mouth at this rejection, this betrayal, this deception, but she settled again and closed her eyes. The hurt was replaced by something worse. Sadness.

It was such a Christine thing to do. She too had always spent a moment shifting about in his arms before slipping into sleep.

Suddenly it was too much to hold the child and Erik quickly laid her down. Then he retreated to Christine’s room, slipping into their bed and casting his mask aside so he could lay his face against the cool sheets.

“My angel,” he murmured, voice muffled by the pillow. “My angel, she is beautiful. She is you. Even now you are cruel to your poor Erik. You made him promise to live without you but you will not let him forget you. You allow him no peace. You and your daughter with those wide, innocent eyes that see no ill in the world. That can’t see the cruelty of men or the faces of monsters. And your hair and your smile and your voice--”

He broke off suddenly, a thought too terrible having occurred to him.

“Oh, Christine,” he howled. “She will have your voice. Why, Christine, why? I want peace! Have I not earned it?”

\----------

His child smiled upon him when he first peered down at her the next morning and the anguish of the night before was easily forgotten. This was peace, to see hands flailing in an impatient request to be held. Erik felt his own face fold into a smile beneath the mask.

But when he picked her up, she began to cry.

“You fickle brat,” he cursed, preparing to stalk out and leave her there. Then he caught sight of his cloak hanging over the side of the crib. “Is that it, mon cœur? You do not like Erik’s skin?”

He had asked Christine that same question when she had flinched at his arms encircling her waist. He had immediately withdrawn then too.

“You dislike Erik’s touch?” he had spat accusingly. “He repulses you?”

“No, no, of course not,” she stammered. She had always been so nervous about offending him in the early days, not laughing indulgently as she did later. “It’s just cold. I’m unused to you being without you coat. I’m sure I’ll get used to it!”

Did Émilie simply find his skin too cold? Christine, true to her word, had ceased to notice it. Neither of them had thought that a child, used to Christine’s warm embrace, might be uncomfortable in Erik’s cold one. The warmth of Christine’s arms was something he missed with a ferocity that made it difficult to breathe. It made sense that Émilie would miss it too.

Erik fetched his coat and returned to the nursery. This time, Émilie happily accepted his arms about her, striking a tiny fist against his chest to show her appreciation. Erik felt the touch reverberate throughout his body, around his heart, down his limbs.

“I’m sorry, mon cœur. Erik wishes he could be a normal father for his daughter. But he loves Émilie very much.”

\----------

Once Émilie had experienced the comfort of being held by her father, she came to demand it constantly. She stretched her arms out whenever Erik came near, cried when Erik put her down, and ceased only when he picked her up again. He was lucky that he had his ability to focus single-mindedly on a task and go without sleep, but even he grew tired after weeks of it. Sometimes he was too weary to remember his coat, or too frustrated to draw it on if he did remember. And so sometimes, when he picked her up with nothing but his thin linen shirtsleeves between their skin, she cried.

But sometimes she didn’t.


	6. Chapter 6

The Persian found it endearing that he always found Erik sleeping when he visited. He remembered the weariness of fatherhood, even though he had a wife and servants and nursemaids.

When he arrived this time, however, he was surprised to see Émilie sleeping as well, her head resting in the crook of her father’s arm, a bit of saliva trailing from her open mouth onto Erik’s shirtsleeves.

“Well don’t just stand there, Daroga,” Erik snapped quietly. “Fetch some tea.” The eyes were open behind the mask.

Nadir did as requested. When he returned, they were both up and Émilie was pulling on Erik’s necktie and babbling nonsense.

“Émilie,” Nadir interrupted after setting the tea tray down, “I have brought you a present.” He held out a small wooden doll which Émilie eyed warily.

“Go on, mon cœur. The insufferable man thinks he can earn Émilie’s favor with gifts. Best not disappoint him.”

With unsuspected grace and speed, she snatched her new toy and turned away so that she could study it in the safety between her little body and her father’s. She seemed to find it acceptable and began to chew contentedly on one of the doll’s legs.

The two men watched her a moment longer before Nadir commented, “The opera is putting on _Faust_ tonight.”

“I’m sure it will be a perfect abomination.”

“Probably.”

“I consider resuming my role as opera ghost from time to time. If nothing else, the income would be appreciated. I am still exceedingly wealthy, but the funds do dwindle quickly. I don’t know if Madame Giry cheats me on everything or if children are really this expensive.”

Émilie tossed her doll to the floor so Erik could pick it up and return it to her.

“Children are not usually this expensive. You simply dress her better than the average princess and buy her more toys than she could ever play with. You will spoil this child, my friend.”

Holding her up in from of him, Erik said, “Do you hear that, mon cœur? This hypocrite brings gifts and then says _I_ spoil you. I think we must demand he leave at once. Like always, he comes to give his unsolicited opinions. Erik cannot allow it!”

He kept talking and saying nothing while Nadir watched open-mouthed. Since he had known him, Erik had always been prone to muttering to himself; probably he was not even aware of it. He seemed no more aware of this constant chatter to his daughter either. He didn’t assume the cooing tone Nadir and Christine used though. Despite his beautiful, dynamic voice, Nadir suspected he didn’t have such a tone in his repertoire. No, his voice was gentle and commanding when he spoke to Émilie. Nadir imagined it was the same voice he had used with Christine when she was a child.

Suddenly Erik rose and set Émilie on the floor, excusing himself to change shirts and bidding Nadir watch the baby.

“I knew I kept you around for something, Daroga,” he remarked before disappearing.

Nadir merely snorted and went to pick up his honorary goddaughter, guessing that between the two men, her feet might never touch the ground. As soon as she was settled, however, she began to cry.

Instantly Erik was back in the doorway, looking disheveled with his shirt only half done up. “What did you do to her?” he demanded.

“Nothing. I’m just holding her.”

Émilie turned in Nadir’s arms and thrust out her hands toward her father who jumped forward to claim her.

“She doesn’t like your skin,” he explained as he used a thumb to wipe away her tears.

“Sorry?”

“Your skin,” Erik said smugly, “it’s too warm. She doesn’t like it.”


	7. Chapter 7

Among his veritable trove of talents, Erik had now mastered feeding his child without allowing her to make a mess of the kitchen. He would hold her upright on his lap with one hand (she couldn’t quite sit on her own yet) and use the other to handle the spoon. With the free hand he did not possess, he could keep her from grabbing at everything in sight. Picking things up and dashing them to the floor had become a favorite hobby and, while he admired her destructive tendencies, cleaning up after Émilie had quickly become irritating. So he would move the plate, the bottle, the flower vase with the dead roses, just before her little fingers could grab them. He did not, however, think to move his face away from her groping hands. Too focused was he on balancing porridge on a spoon that he didn’t notice the little fingers at the edge of his leather mask, tugging when they found it could move.

Erik realized only at the last moment, just as the ties came undone, and reached to hold the mask against his face with both hands. The spoon clattered to the floor and Émilie – Émilie slipped sideways.

There was only an instant, not enough time to think. Yet Erik saw everything as if it took a lifetime. Through the narrow eyeholes of the mask, he saw her falling, her white gown tangled between her legs and her curls cast over her face.

The mask fell and he snatched her from the air, from the stone floor. From harm.

With trembling hands, he held her tiny, fragile body against his heaving chest and pressed his lips to her forehead.

It was the first time he had kissed his child without a barrier of leather or porcelain. First time he had kissed anyone other than Christine. The feeling of her soft skin against his lipless mouth, so different from Christine’s happy greetings and passionate embraces and those terrible kisses of redemption. He had felt the urge to protect Christine too, but the instinct was always coupled with anger or hatred or jealousy. With Émilie there was nothing else. Just love, fierce and pure like a drug. Erik felt his heart clench as if Émilie was crushing it between her mischievous hands.

He kissed the tears from her cheeks next and laid his own cheek against her soft curls. His deformed cheek. Immediately, he drew away from her as ecstasy and adrenaline grew cold and heavy. He unwillingly raised his head.

The sight of his naked face shocked Émilie into silence. Where her father had been before, a stranger now held her.

“Mon cœur…” he breathed, unable to do anything else. Despair overwhelmed him, stronger than before, that what had been revealed could not be unseen. The feeling quickly rose to obscure his vision and twist his thoughts. His daughter’s tearful face faded from view and instead he saw hundreds of faces, pointing, jeering, cowering. He had always worn his mask around Émilie and never considered she ever need see him without it. That, he had believed, was the benefit of being the one to raise her. She would learn not to indulge curiosity, or even to wonder what lay beneath the mask. He knew that he could never have prevented it in Christine, but he had intended to prevent it in his daughter.

There was none of the familiar rage. He did not want to shake the girl or scream at her, nor did he want to overturn chairs and tables. He only wished he could hide his face and pretend nothing had happened.

But how could he now? How could he put the mask back on? How could he be denied the joy of gazing at his daughter like this, the edges of his vision blurred by affectionate tears rather than a mask?

Her bottom lip began to quiver.

Quickly, Erik retrieved the mask from the floor and held it before his face.

“Don’t be frightened, mon cœur. It is only Erik. It is only your papa.”

Her eyes lit up in recognition. He drew the mask away and she frowned.

“Surprise,” he said, desperate.

Confusion held the upset at bay. She was close enough that, when she reached out a hand, her fingers brushed the thin, dead skin of his cheek. He flinched away at the painful caress. At this rejection, the tears again welled up in her eyes.

“No, no, Émilie,” he rushed, quickly putting his face back into arms’ reach. “It’s alright. Erik is sorry. I’m not used to…to gentle touches.” She hesitated this time, but Erik understood her, or at least whatever part of her was him. She _wanted_ to touch him and study him, this new, peculiar thing before her. Not to mock or hurt, but merely to know, just as he would observe a grand building and feel the rough stone beneath his palm. Gently, he took her hand and brought it back to his cheek. Realizing permission had been given, she began to explore the ridges and hollows she found there as he watched intently, closing his eyes only when a finger came too close. She touched the loose skin where his nose should have been and then slid down to his closed mouth.

He smiled beneath her fingertips, though he imagined it more resembled a grimace.

But she recognized it. She withdrew her hand and gave him a toothy grin in return, though it turned to a cross frown when his heavy sigh ruffled her curls.

He covered his face with the mask again, delighting in her squeal, and then her clap when he pulled it away again. It was a game to her, this man with two faces, and Erik happily indulged her for precious moments. When he finally rose to collect her breakfast dishes, he set Émilie firmly on his hip and, to free his other hand, gave her the mask she had so wanted. For a moment she studied it, sticking her fingers through the eyeholes and trying to bend the stiff leather, and then put the edge of it firmly in her mouth.

He made a face at her, though it felt awkward to purposely contort those muscles, and said lightly to the ghost in the room, “Darling Christine, your daughter did better than you.”


	8. Chapter 8

Émilie quickly came to recognize both faces as her father, though she seemed to prefer the maskless face that smiled and cried and made silly faces that she could not yet imitate. Not that she’d ever be able to imitate features that were naturally grotesque, but she tried. Erik was sure to tell Christine of all her daughter’s accomplishments.

He told her that her daughter’s first word was _Erik_ and her second was _Emmy_. Her third was _Christine_.

“Erik,” began Nadir one day, “why does Émilie talk about her mother so often?”

Erik froze. Christine was not a permitted topic between the men. The last time it had been brought up, when Nadir suggested he move some of Christine’s things out so he might release his grip on the past, Erik had physically chased him from the house. This time Erik asked calmly, “Is it unusual that a girl should speak of her mother?”

“It is when her mother is gone.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Christine is gone, Erik.”

“ _Don’t_ say that!” he shrieked, drawing himself up.

“You talk to her, I know you do. Allah knows I talked to my wife for years, but what of Émilie? She cannot grow up with a ghost. What will she think when she leaves this cellar?”

Erik fixed Nadir with a penetrating stare. “Why would she ever leave?”

“Oh, Erik, has she ever seen the sun? She needs to be outside. The cellar of an opera house is no place for a little girl. Now she needs sunlight and fresh air. She’ll need to run around. Later she’ll need friends, people her own age.”

“I didn’t need friends!” he roared. “ _Friends_ who mock and jeer. She is safe here, with me!”

“And she’ll be safe with you in the sunlight as well.”

“Get out!”

Nadir sprang up himself, but not to leave.

“Consider what is best for Émilie. You are clinging too tightly to Christine, but she is gone from this place. You do not need to be here to have her with you. You have Émilie. Christine is always with you.”

“You fool! You know _nothing_ ,” Erik spat. You think you understand me? No one understands me. No one!” Erik raked his fingers against his scalp, pulling hair out as he did. “You are a constant thorn in my side, Daroga. Always meddling. I do not want you here! I do not want your advice! Leave! Get out! Or I will go find my lasso.”

The screaming subsided into incomprehensible muttering and Nadir finally retreated, considering taking Émilie with him. It had been many months since he had seen his friend in a rage, but he rather thought the child would calm him. He left, and planned to return in a week.


	9. Chapter 9

Damn the Persian for _occasionally_ being right.

Erik went to Christine that night and begged her forgiveness. They had been so comfortable in their little dark cave, safe and happy, that Erik had all but forgotten that a cruel outside world existed. But Christine loved the sunlight, loved the world above. She gladly sacrificed it for his darkness, but asked often for a visit of a few hours. Her child would need the same.

They started off with nights, the darkness soothing to Émilie’s weak eyes and Erik’s fragile security. Eventually, over months, they progressed to twilight evenings and then cloudy afternoons in empty allies and the corners of parks. The little girl’s eyes remained unaccustomed to light and her skin burned easily, so Erik was careful to tie a bonnet firmly on her head. Still, these daily walks always tired them both out with the sun and the people and they fell into a habit of napping on the sofa before dinner, which Émilie now ate on her own and in her own chair.

It was one night when they sat around the dinner table that Erik counted the months and realized Émilie was almost a year old. And that he had done nothing for the past months but care for her. No reading, no architecture, no drawing.

“Christine, my angel,” he said, looking at the empty chair opposite him, “your daughter takes up far too much of Erik’s time.”

If he thought she had been a handful early on, it was nothing to when she learned to crawl a few months ago. He dreaded her learning to walk. Already she would try to follow him from room to room, using walls and tables for support. Soon he had begun following her in turn, reaching out to pick her up whenever her legs gave way. She fell often and while Erik had nearly collapsed into tears himself the first time, he soon found soothing the slight injuries a most wonderful torment. He both hated that she was hurt and was elated that she came to him for comforting.

However, she was growing stronger every day and would soon walk without stumbling, which meant she might find her way into bigger hurts that could not be fixed with a kiss and some distraction. He had to keep her safe.

That night, as he lay in their bed, he expressed these reasonable fears aloud to Christine. By the time he woke in the morning, he had come to the conclusion that he need not spend every moment of his considerable waking hours with their daughter. If he placed his dangerous inventions on the very top shelves, locked away the deadlier poisons in the little cabinet in his study, and – in general, if he just locked up everything – he needn’t worry about her so much. It took him an entire day and a good deal of grumbling to hide everything away.

Since he could not bring Émilie into his study – even with the obviously dangerous things locked up, a walking toddler with curious hands could still find too much to hurt herself in there – he moved his drafting table to the doorway. That way, he could draw and watch her while she amused herself on her collection of blankets on the floor. There was no end to her focus, and thus no end to Erik’s fascination in watching her, even while he was working on other things. She was a wonderfully cognizant child, seeming to understand her father and herself far better than her age should allow.

But then, she was Erik’s child.

No longer did she cry over anything other than injuries. Instead she quietly insisted, “Papa” or “Erik” whenever she needed something. And now that those few words had come to her, she seemed ever anxious for more. Though she could not yet form them herself, she took great delight in placing her fingers at his throat and feeling the words vibrate beneath. The first time she had done it, Erik had leapt from beneath her and sent her crashing to the ground. Even after he had become comfortable with Christine’s caresses everywhere else on his body, years of killing with the Punjab lasso had given him a protective reflex when it came to his throat. Now he put up with it quite happily, watching her mouth try to copy the nonsense he said to her and Christine. Later, when he ran out of his own words, she tried to mimic those from the books he read aloud. It was a shame she could not understand what her read to her, or she would have had a thorough knowledge of medicine, philosophy, architecture, and at least five languages before her third birthday.

Even now, however, Erik could see her frustration. She knew there was meaning behind his voice, behind the words he underlined with a finger, but her child’s mind could not puzzle it out. This, Erik could recognize. How often had he felt just that way as a child? Too weak, too dumb. He had worked constantly to improve himself. Mostly it was out of need. He needed stealth to gain the attention of his mother. Needed strength to escape the gypsy camp. Needed to keep busy a mind that moved too quickly to retain a firm grip on sanity. He swore Émilie would never face the hardships he had. She would never need to prove herself. Erik already loved her with a bond he could not explain. But he recognized a mind like his own. Calmer, with Christine’s sweetness and stable temper, yet still desperate for knowledge.

So he taught her and spoke to her with nearly unfailing patience. And soon she spoke back, but she had not inherited Christine’s voice.

She had inherited his.

His wife’s voice was beautiful, pure and raw, clear like a snow-melt lake after he had trained her. His voice had never needed training. It was rich and full and entrancing without his even trying. It was impossible, or it should have been. Émilie’s had the same qualities. It was quiet and unsure, still that of a little girl, but it was unmistakably the same voice. He found it unsettling to hear his unearthly tones spoken from a mouth other than his own, and discovered that she could affect him just as much as he could affect others.

Briefly, he wondered how she would sing. With the same sensual, hypnotic musicality as him? With perfect notes and passion? But she did not know what singing was. She had never heard it.

\----------

He taught her _please_ and _thank you_ after having heard a mother reprimand her insolent son while they were out for a walk. Then he took great pleasure in all his daughter’s little requests.

“Papa, apples, please.”

“Yes, mon cœur.”

“Papa, the red crayon, please.”

“But I am using the red crayon, you spoiled child.”

“Papa, the red crayon _now_ , please.”

Every moment, it was “Up, please” and “Read, please” and “Cake, please.”

“Mama says no cake, mon cœur.”

“I hate mama!” grumbled Émilie.

“How dare you!” he shouted at her. Her eyes had gone wide in shock, but true to form, she did not cry or cower. “Apologize to your mother,” Erik roared.

“Sorry, mama,” Émilie mumbled. “Please.”

Erik’s favorite, however, was “Papa, kiss, please.”

He’d gone still when she’d first said it. She wanted a kiss from him? She _asked_ to have his monstrous lips against her perfect forehead? No one had ever asked _him_ for a kiss before. Christine and Émilie had both allowed it certainly, but never asked. For a long time, he had only sat staring blankly at her. There was no deceit in her expectant eyes. Rather there was impatience and, with a frustrated noise, Émilie placed her own hand against her mouth, kissed it wetly, and then blew on her open palm, just as Nadir had shown her.

“Like that, papa,” she instructed.

He mimicked the gesture obediently.

“Now here, please,” she said, touching her hair.

He bowed over her and placed the gentle kiss at the roots of her curls. Never again did he hesitate when she asked, and she asked often. He was sure to oblige this request every time, no matter how inconvenient.


	10. Chapter 10

Nadir was momentarily surprised to be greeted only by Erik at the door to the underground house. Normally Émilie came as well, clinging to her father’s leg while Erik cried, “Get off, you insolent monkey!”

This time he did not see the little girl until he was settled in his usual seat on the sofa. She was on her stomach on the floor, a number of open books spread around her. So absorbed was she that she did not bother to greet her honorary godfather and demand her customary gift.

“What is she doing over there, old man?”

“Reading.”

Erik seemed in a strange, short mood today. He always made Nadir to feel as if he was intruding on some matter of great importance, but today it felt like walking in on something intimate. This was a family, never mind how strange, and Nadir was the outsider.

“Reading?” Nadir exclaimed, doing his best to ignore the cold welcome. “She is not yet three years old. What is she reading?” He got to his feet and went to look over Émilie’s shoulder. The open books were filled with colored pictures and tall, childish letters. Written in red. “You made these books for her, my friend? You are truly a craftsman. What stories did you write?”

“Christine’s father’s.”

Suddenly the little girl was before them, clasping a book to her chest.

“Papa,” she asked, “will mama be up from her nap soon? I want to read with her.”

With a smile, Erik looked over at his daughter. “Very soon, I think, mon cœur.”

“Erik!”

The masked gaze fell upon Nadir, curiosity at the outburst evident. “I must apologize for my wife, Daroga. She was very tired this morning. Erik kept her up rather late last night.”

“Erik!”

“Why do you keep shouting Erik’s name?” he snapped impatiently.

Nadir was speechless. The madness wasn’t gone. Not in the least. He had known Erik still spoke to his wife, but he had not imagined that Erik could hear her speaking back. How long had this been going on without his notice? Nadir was sure there had been a time when Erik knew Christine was gone, but when had his fevered, despairing mind had brought her back? This might not be the single minded obsession with the young opera singer or the desperate murderous rage, but this quiet delusion seemed no less dangerous.

“Erik,” Nadir whispered gravely, “Christine is dead.”

It took a moment to register; Erik had returned to gazing at Émilie and only slowly did his focus come back to the Persian, the golden eyes shining through mere slits.

“Do not insult my wife,” he said dangerously.

Sensing conflict, Émilie was before her father in an instant. Erik pushed her aside and commanded she go to her room.

“No, Émilie will stay here!” the little girl shrieked.

“Erik, she’s talking to her dead mother! That isn’t healthy for a child.”

“Stop saying that! Émilie, go to your room!”

“No! I will not!”

“Stop shouting!” Erik screamed. “You’ll wake Christine!”

“Christine is gone, Erik!”

The masked man covered his ears and howled.

“Papa!” cried Émilie just as loudly.

At that sound, Erik lifted his daughter off the floor with one hand at her collar and carried her to her room. He pushed her inside and locked the door. The sound of her angry fists on the wood echoed down the hall after them.

“Erik, how could you let her think her mother is alive?”

“Her mother _is_ alive. Christine is Erik’s living bride. She would not leave him.”

“What will happen when Émilie leaves here and enters the world?”

“So that’s it, then? You tell these lies so you can take her away from me? You are wrong. She will never leave. I will keep her here forever. She cannot leave me.” He began to pace in the narrow hallway before the door to Christine’s bedroom – guarding it, Nadir realized, to keep the Persian from storming in and waking Christine. Or, perhaps, storming in and finding there was no Christine to wake. Nadir couldn’t be sure and Erik was rambling on. “Erik can never have Christine fully. He must share her with the world, he knows this now. She is too beautiful for poor, hideous Erik to keep all to himself. But Émilie is his. She is from Erik’s darkness. He made her! He alone loves her! Can Erik not have this one joy? Please, he asks humbly, let him have Émilie. He will keep her safe, here, with him forever!”

Suddenly Erik froze and turned to Nadir as if he had just remembered the man was there at all.

“I fear I must ask you to leave now, Daroga,” he said mildly. “Christine is never much in the mood for visitors after a nap. But please, do come against next week. I’m sure she will be glad to receive you then.”

“Don’t think I won’t come,” said Nadir even as he was physically pushed toward the door. “This will stop, Erik. I will not let you continue like this.”

Nadir didn’t return for several months. New traps had been set in the passages down to the fifth cellar. Not to kill, merely to deter and wound. Nadir had had quite enough of being caught in Erik’s traps for a lifetime though. When he did return again, he did not speak of Christine.


	11. Chapter 11

Émilie seemed to understand that there were certain places off-limits to her in the house. Her parents’ room, for one. Erik’s locked bedroom. His study. The mirrored torture chamber. Now three years old, he did not doubt that she was talented and curious enough to find her way into all these places, and yet she did not. For once, someone followed Erik’s unspoken rules. He was at a loss for where she had learned that. Certainly not her parents.

When she wanted something from him while he was in Christine’s room or his study (even he had no cause to visit the other two rooms) she would stand at the door and quietly request his attention. She was so quiet always. Then again, she never had a reason to be loud. Her father could pick up on her every whisper with his sharp hearing and she had no one else to compete with or demand attention from. Unless Erik was in a rage, in which case she was adept at fighting back, she remained quiet and calm, not prone to hysterics or temper.

Until she turned four. Suddenly she seemed to be bored with everything. She was reading Erik’s books now, in French and German. She could draw somewhat, though with no notable gift and no pleasure. She painted from time to time with admirable skill. And sometimes she still played with her dolls and toys. For all her knowledge, she was still a little girl.

But mostly she paced. Without her father’s single-minded obsession with tasks, each hobby was only a temporary distraction from the nervous energy that seemed to be consuming her. She walked about anxiously, tapping her fingernails on walls and tables as she passed. Their daily walks grew longer and longer as Émilie begged not to go back _quite yet_ , and consisted mostly of the little girl starting off to look at whatever caught her eye and Erik pulling her firmly back to safety at his side.

When they sat down to dinner, her inane chatter was no more. Instead her attention was caught every few seconds by something new, only occasionally Erik, and usually something that existed only in her mind. All the while, her fingers, now bandaged after the tapping had torn her nails, made nonsense rhythms on the wood table.

They were driving each other insane. Or rather, insaner than usual. Erik did not know what to do for his daughter and Émilie had no patience for him to figure it out. He could not leave, though he longed to escape and find solace in the city’s deserted streets at night. It was what he had done when he could no longer face Christine. But Émilie was still too young and his home too dangerous for her to be left alone for the more than an hour or two such an excursion would take.

So Erik could only attempt to manage his own temper and despair as he bandaged her bloody fingers and watched her pull unrelentingly at her beautiful curls. He looked at her and saw himself.

Normally he liked seeing traces of his own habits in his daughter, his talents, his genius. It reminded him that she was his. This he did not like. He recognized his own misery and madness and found he could not witness it without feeling some of the insanity himself.

“Émilie, stop!” he roared, hearing those tapping fingers on the doorframe of his study. He looked over to find her standing there on the threshold. “Your incessant noise is driving Erik mad! Go read a book or something!”

“Émilie is tired of reading!”

“Well, Erik is trying to work. Leave him alone.”

“Émilie feels strange. I don’t like it.”

Erik set down his pen and summoned his daughter to his tall drafting stool so he could pick her up.

“Why do you feel strange, mon cœur?” he asked softly. “Are you sick? Tell Erik what to do for you.”

She laid her head beneath his chin, still for a precious moment.

“I want to go out,” she sighed. “I don’t like it here. I am bored.”

Erik’s chair fell over with the force with which he stood up, now clutching Émilie to him and gazing about wildly as if this new threat to his peaceful existence came from an outsider rather than his own daughter.

“No, you cannot leave,” he moaned. Why could he not comfort her? He had done everything, _everything_. “You ungrateful brat!” he sneered in a surge of anger, before beseeching, “What do you need that Erik can’t give you?”

“I hate it here! It’s dark and I am bored.”

Immediately he set her down and began to pace as she did, wringing his hands as he went. “Don’t lie! It is me you hate--!”

“I don’t hate--”

“Don’t deny it!” he shouted as temper won out over despair. “You have been looking for ways to escape. You have planned this with the Persian. Perhaps I should throw you out then. Then we shall see how well you do without Erik. Christine, come here and control your child, the lying wretch--”

“Listen to me!” Émilie screeched.

Erik seized her by the wrist and dragged her down the hall to the front door and out into the arms of a shocked Nadir, who had just arrived for his weekly visit.

“And don’t come back!” Erik shouted before he slammed the door shut.


	12. Chapter 12

The Persian looked down at the child at his feet as he collected himself. She wasn’t crying. In fact, she simply looked rather annoyed, as if she was tired of dealing with her father’s moods. Nadir knew Erik did not rage at her often. Usually she seemed to calm his temper rather than stoke it. Yet apparently only a few times had been plenty for Émilie.

“Well, Émilie, where are you off to this fine afternoon?” he asked finally.

She only shrugged, her own anger fading into bewilderment. She rubbed her wrist where Erik had held too tight.

“Would you accompany me on a walk, my dear? The weather is very pleasant, not too bright, and we can go see the swans in the park,” Nadir said the last loudly, knowing Erik was listening on the other side of the door. “Does that sound agreeable?”

“Yes, please.”

They set off back the way Nadir had come, slowly approaching the fresh air of the outside world.

Émilie tugged on the Persian’s hand just after they stepped onto the Rue Scribe. “Are my mama and papa different from other mamas and papas?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said after a short hesitation. “Your family is a bit different.”

“Oh.”

They were at the park before Émilie spoke again.

“Does my mama not love me?”

Nadir was too alarmed to respond and Émilie continued, “She talks to papa all the time, but not to me. I talk to her but she never answers.”

They walked on in silence, Nadir seeking an answer amongst the passerby. At last he glanced around, hoping Erik wasn’t following too closely and asked, “Can you keep a secret, Émilie?”

The little girl nodded eagerly.

“When you were just a baby, you had a mother like every other girl. Her name was Christine. She was very kind and very beautiful, and she loved you very much. So much. But she got sick and she died. She didn’t want to leave you, but…But she…She knew her love for you wouldn’t end. Now your father likes to talk with her. Her memory gives him comfort.” With some maneuvering, he was able to get down on one knee in front of the little girl. “And _you_ , dear Émilie, you may speak to her too if you ever need someone to listen. She’ll hear everything you say. You might not hear her speak back, but she will always watch over you.”

Émilie stared back at him with those wide, precocious eyes. They were the eyes of someone who, despite few years and a sheltered existence, had been forced to comprehend a great deal.

Suddenly she smiled, all teeth and glittering eyes. “Thank you, Uncle Nadir, I understand.”

He patted her cheek and stood, glad the moment was over. “Now,” he said, “why don’t you run to that tree over there as fast as you can.”

“But…but papa always holds my hand. I’m not allowed to leave his side.” She looked around nervously, the park now full of dangers without Erik’s intimidating presence.

“It’s not that far. I’ll be able to see you from here.”

“Émilie doesn’t want to.”

“Alright then, we shall run together. You must run slow though. I am not as quick as I once was.”

At that promise, Émilie hesitated no longer. She grasped Nadir’s hand and took off for the tree. From the start, she was yanking on Nadir’s arm, her young legs itching for as much speed as possible.

“Faster, Uncle Nadir, faster!” she cried.

“I cannot, my dear,” he panted and he dropped her hand. Émilie sprinted ahead without pausing until she had reached the tree. There she bounced on the balls of her feet until Nadir joined her.

“Where next, Uncle Nadir?” she demanded.

So he sent her to the bench, the lamppost, the pond, the rose garden. And as she ran, she left behind the pale, listless girl from the cellar.

Erik took the same care with Émilie’s dress as with his own. He put her in the dresses of noble children, with full skirts and bows and ruffles. It did not stop her. It did not slow her down. She pulled the petticoats up over her knobby knees and ran like any other child in the park. Or almost any other. Her movements were awkward and unpracticed. She had long ago lost the last of her baby fat. Now she was tall with spindly limbs and sharp joints. It would have made her look unhealthy, but her face – her perfect face – was rosy and her eyes were bright.

When she returned, winded and shaking from over-exertion, she sat down heavily beside Nadir on the grass.

“I like this game,” she said after a while. “Can you bring me to the park every week and play with me?”

“If you like. I’m sure your papa will play it with you as well.”

Immediately she sobered. “Oh papa! He will be so angry. He does not like me outside without him. But…he told me to leave and not come back--”

“Émilie, look.” Nadir pointed into the shade beneath the trees. There Erik stood, hiding his mask beneath a wide brimmed hat and high collared coat. The three of them watched each other for a moment. “Émilie, do you see that old woman by the pond? I want you to take these coins to her and tell her you wish to feed the ducks. She will tell you what to do.”

“What? No! I don’t want to!”

“If you do, I will bring you to the park next week and we will run some more. Say, ‘Madame, please, I would like to buy some crumbs.’”

“I’ve never talked to--”

“My brave girl. I believe you can do it.”

With a doubtful nod, she went to do as the Persian commanded. He made sure to smile reassuringly whenever she glanced back.

“Who is that woman?”

Nadir looked up to see Erik glowering down at him. The bottom corner of his mask had been riddled with teeth marks, as if someone had chewed on it.

“A cleverly disguised assassin. Sit down, you have me looking into the sun.”

Erik arranged his long limbs into a comfortable position before saying, “She’s not well, Daroga.”

“Not well! Didn’t you see her running?”

“She paces all the time and can’t focus on anything. And she’s not sleeping. Every night she wakes Christine and me up to complain that she simply isn’t tired.”

“That sounds like you, my friend.”

“Yes, but I don’t want her to be that way. I want her to be happy, always.”

“You’ll never get that with a child.”

In the silence, Nadir looked over to see that Erik had fixed him with cool, unamused eyes.

He continued, “She needs to be out, Erik. There is not enough stimulation for a child in a cellar.”

“She has books!” he blustered.

“She needs more than books. She needs people and little friends, sunlight and exercise. Your daily walks are not enough. I used to have Reza run about in the gardens for hours to tire him out. And don’t tell me you didn’t run about as a child.”

“I was usually locked in an attic.”

“The great and powerful Erik, locked in an attic. I don’t believe for a second that stopped you. No, she may be a genius and she may be yours, but she is still four years old. You ought to send her to school.”

“What can a school teach that I cannot?”

“Absolutely nothing. But she must meet with people. Have Madame Giry teach her ballet with the other girls. She will find friends there. You cannot confine her to a cellar all her life. Besides, we are no longer young men, Erik. Who will look after her when we are gone?”

Erik sighed and turned his gaze to his daughter.

“You flatter yourself, Daroga, if you compare your age with mine. I am not on my deathbed.”

“Between you and Émilie, I get closer every day.”

“Not I,” said Erik as Émilie turned to them and waved, her hands still full of bread crumbs. “I have never been so far from death as I am now.”


	13. Chapter 13

It was decided that Émilie would be entrusted to Madame Giry’s care for two hours each day for the purpose of learning ballet. By all accounts – in other words, Nadir’s retelling of delivering Erik’s letter – both the Giry woman and her daughter were delighted to finally meet their dear friend’s child.

Émilie was less enthusiastic. It seemed she was as terrified of leaving Erik as the man himself was of losing her.

“Why do I have to go?” she asked.

“You don’t have to, mon cœur,” said Erik cheerfully.

“Yes, you do,” said Nadir. “Don’t you want to meet other little girls?”

“No.”

“Good girl,” Erik said and Nadir shot him a glare.

“Don’t you want to learn to dance ballet?” Nadir insisted.

“I don’t know what that is.”

Erik acquired her a pair of pink ballet slippers and a frilly little skirt and her fears seemed mollified. She still knew nothing about ballet. Though she lived beneath an opera house, she had never seen a performance. Nevertheless, she liked flouncing around the house in her dance things and hearing the patter of her slippers.

The night before she was to begin, however, she knocked on Erik’s door.

“It’s alright, Christine,” he mumbled. “Erik will take care of it.”

As soon as he opened the door, Émilie rushed into his arms. She wasn’t crying, but she buried her face at Erik’s neck and sobbed, “I don’t want to go! I’m scared. What if they don’t like me? What if I’m no good? I want to stay with you.”

“Do you want to see something beautiful? Come, Erik will show you.”

He carried her up through the five cellars and through the mirror into Christine’s musty dressing room. There, safe from his traps, he let her walk on her own and led the way into the empty, echoing halls of the opera house. He showed her the managers’ office, the prop house, the costume room, the dance studios, the grand lobby. Anywhere she might visit while in the world above. At the last, she finally grew tired and as they climbed the main staircase, she sat down on a middle step, too weary to continue. Erik picked her up to take her the rest of the way.

“Just one more thing, mon cœur,” he promised. “Then we will go home.”

They entered the theater through a side door. The vast space was nearly dark, glinting gilt and candlelight giving the only illumination. Erik didn’t walk in himself, but let Émilie down and watched from the threshold as she stumbled into the murky shadows between the rows of velvet seats. She tested out several chairs, studied the private boxes and the chandelier high above her, gazed down into the orchestra pit at instruments and music stands left there.

When she climbed onto the stage, Erik though his heart might stop. There were no spot lights, no music, no sets. Only dim light and an empty, dusty theater. Yet she could have been in the midst of a performance with her regality.

Erik felt a profound sadness in looking at her. He didn’t understand why. Certainly his daughter reminded him of Christine, standing alone but filling the stage with her angel’s voice. It seemed that should be a fond memory, make him happy. Instead, he ached terribly to return to his wife, as if she somehow wouldn’t be there, sleeping peacefully several floors below.

He mounted the stage and came beside his daughter. With a quick bit of illusion, he produced a pink rose for her.

“Now I have shown you my domain,” he whispered, letting the echoing space carry his voice.

“What is a…a domain?”

“Quiet, let Erik speak. Here I control everything. I see everything. Nothing can harm Émilie here. She is the queen. But because you are queen, you must always be brave. That is what queens do. You must go to dance class and hold your head high and not show any fear.” He thought a moment before adding, “And Émilie must tell Erik if any of the other ballet rats are mean to her so I can throw them in the lake…Do you understand, mon cœur?”

“Yes, papa.”

“Then let’s go home.” He took his daughter’s hand and led the way back, smiling all the way. Christine would be so proud of her Erik. His words had sounded just like the little stories her papa had told her as a child.


	14. Chapter 14

When they reached the dressing room and false mirror the next morning, Madame Giry was waiting in Christine’s old chair. She stood up as the mirror opened.

What a sight to see the opera ghost, in cloak, mask, and hat, standing silhouetted in the doorway while a pale, skinny child in a tutu clung to his leg and tried to hide behind his thin frame. Madame Giry covered her mouth, hoping her expression conveyed the required fear and respect rather than amusement. The phantom had long since ceased to scare her, though his overwhelming presence, the few times he had exposed her to it when clarifying his needed supplies, still made her slightly anxious. At this moment, she hardly noticed him at all. She cared only for Christine’s trembling daughter.

She got down on one knee and held out a hand. Strict as she was, it could not be said that she did not love the girls entrusted to her care.

“Mademoiselle Émilie,” she said kindly, “would you let me lead you to you lesson? We’ve been waiting for you a long time.”

The girl came hesitantly, but of her own accord. It seemed her father would pull her back at the last moment though. He had grabbed her shoulder and started walking backwards.

“Monsieur,” said Madame Giry conversationally, “Meg and I would like to take tea with her and then I shall bring her back here at one, if that is agreeable.”

With great effort, the phantom stopped moving, uncurled his hand from her shoulder finger by finger, and gave her a little push forward. He had to swallow twice before he could say tightly, “Yes, that will be fine, Madame.”

Émilie took Madame Giry’s hand and allowed herself to be led out of the room while the older woman distracted her with compliments on her tutu and promises of how much fun she would have and how Meg would dote on her. Only once did she glance back to see her father standing in the doorway, watching her leave. Behind the mask, his eyes betrayed no emotion. He had prepared for this moment well.


	15. Chapter 15

As painful as it had been to leave her in the morning, Erik found there was little sweeter than stepping into the dressing room in the afternoon to have Émilie leap into his arms in a bundle of pink tulle and exclaim, “Papa, a kiss, please!” Mindful of Madame Giry in the room, but still deliriously happy to be asked for his touch in public, he laid his masked mouth against her forehead. This was happiness, he thought. This was love. This was the delirium he would embrace without fear, willingly.

Erik had to force himself to focus on what Madame Giry was saying.

“…lovely girl, Monsieur. Christine would have been very proud.”

“Yes, yes,” he murmured distractedly. “She is proud.”

The woman let a quizzical furrow of her brow betray her expression for a moment. Nadir had tried to explain the delicate situation though, so she spoke no more on the subject. Instead she said, “She’s a little shy but we’ll get her talking before long. And I daresay she’ll sleep well tonight. She fell right asleep in the middle of class. But she’ll strengthen up. Soon she’ll be dancing just like her – just like Meg.” Instantly Madame Giry returned to dignified silence.

“I thank you, Madame, as always.” The phantom, too, seemed to be struggling to recollect his own dignity. Gone was the regal statue of the morning.

“Will you bring her tomorrow, Monsieur?”

“Yes, Madame.”

xxx

Of course Erik watched her. He knew what she learned, who she was with, what she heard. Yet every night, he listened to her endless retellings as if all were brand new to him. It was worth letting her go for a few hours each day to have these evenings. His beautiful girl was happy to come home to him. To her Erik. There was no more madness in her. No more pacing. Her fingers healed without scarring.

Because he watched her, Erik knew the question would soon come from his daughter as to just who the opera ghost was. Having realized Émilie did not sleep in the dormitories with them, the other ballerinas had asked where she lived. Dutiful child that she was, Émilie recited, “By the lake in the fifth cellar of the Opera Garnier,” and the rumors started.

“Are you the phantom of the opera, papa?” she asked over dinner.

Having given it some thought, he had decided incredulous nonchalance would be his strategy. “Why would you ask that?”

“My friends say that the phantom of the opera lives in the fifth cellar and because Émilie also lives in the fifth cellar, she must know the phantom but I don’t know any phantom. I only know you. So are you the phantom?”

He began slowly. “I…used to be the phantom--” Émilie’s face lit up “—but not anymore. I am only a man.”

Her face fell and she chewed on her lip. _Only Erik_ was not nearly as exciting as a phantom for a father. “Why not anymore?”

“Being a phantom is a lot of work. Erik cannot do that and take care of Émilie and Christine.”

“Oh…Can I be a phantom?”

“No!”

“Why not?” she whined. She was getting good at whining since she had started with the dance lessons.

“Because Erik says so.”

“Papa, that is a bad reason. I want to be a phantom too.”

“No!” he stood up from the table, desperate to escape a situation that threatened his grip on sanity. He took a breath. “No, you cannot. Only certain people can be phantoms and you are not one of them.” He strode to the door.

“Is that why I can't wear a mask?”

Erik’s body went rigid, his hands frozen and clenched at his sides. He happened to be wearing his own mask at that moment, having left it on after retrieving Émlie from Madame Giry. Now his hand flew to it, making sure it was secure.

“You mock my face?” he snarled. Émilie, who hadn't noticed his change in mood was surprised and slipped out of her chair to stand ready for a fight. “You have a perfect face. What would you know of it, you stupid child? You must be so ashamed to speak to your little friends about Erik. As the opera ghost, I was feared. No one would dare laugh about the opera ghost. But when it's just me, what use is that? Now I’m just a man with a hideous face. Or perhaps you're not ashamed? Perhaps you laugh at Erik and his unfortunate face. Yes, that's it. You think it's amusing that I must wear a mask, like a monstrous costume! Something I can take off at will! But no! The mask is beautiful compared to what lies beneath.”

At that he ripped it from his face, the ties pulling quite a bit of his sparse hair with it. For a moment, he gazed at the thing with disgust, then hurled it across the table with enough force to hit the vase with the dead roses and send it all to the ground where the vase shattered. Erik’s subconscious saw Émilie leap back onto her chair to avoid the shards and he covered his face with his hands so she wouldn’t have to look at him anymore. “The hideous face beneath…” he moaned. “How can you understand when you are so beautiful? Christine never could – can. Never _can_. She does not understand.” Tears dripped through his fingers and spattered his coat sleeves.

“Papa?” Émilie breathed. She had come to stand before him.

Slowly he raised his terrible face to hers, though he kept his hands half covering it. With only him for company, she had never learned to school her expressions. All her emotions shone plainly in her eyes. At this moment, there was only confusion. Not the pity Christine unwittingly displayed. Or the fear others betrayed at his rages. Only pure, childish confusion.

“I don’t understand. Papa, explain, please.”

“Does this face repulse you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you find it ugly?”

She didn’t answer.

“Come now,” he said, taking her by the shoulders. “Look closely. How can you bear to have _this_ for a father? Surely you wish I looked more like one of the _handsome_ men you see in the park. Well?” He shook her.

“Don’t they wear masks too?”

Erik’s hand slipped and Émilie’s momentum carried her into the edge of the table. She hit the edge with a soft thud and slipped to the floor, but she wasn’t hurt. Just picked herself up and looked ready to push him down in turn if she could manage it.

Erik, however, cried out in his own pain and fled the kitchen. He didn’t stop until he was locked in Christine’s room and there he wailed, “Christine! Oh, Christine, forgive your Erik. No, he is not worthy to ask that. Oh, Christine! I have hurt your child. She is so young. She does not know the harm in what she says. What have I done? Christine must take her daughter and run. Take her, my angel, and leave poor Erik. He is not fit to be a father!”


	16. Chapter 16

For the first time since Nadir had been visiting this peculiar family, Émilie answered the door, alone.

“Good afternoon, Uncle Nadir,” she said pleasantly. Just like a lady, she showed him into the parlor and had him sit down. She wasn’t permitted to use the samovar or stove, not because Erik was worried about burns and fires but because he knew what a mischievous child with endless imagination could do with a flame. So instead Émilie filled the teapot with cold water from the pitcher. Nadir drank it politely.

“Madame Giry was concerned that you haven’t been to class in three days. Where is Erik?”

“Papa is in mama’s room.”

The answer was normal enough given the circumstances, but her tone was curious.

“Was he angry?”

“I don’t know. He was strange. Uncle Nadir, am I ugly?”

“Certainly not.”

“Is papa ugly?”

Nadir cursed Erik. Silently, of course. He cursed the man’s appearance, his fears, his doubts, his daughter. Cursed the people who made him unable to see past his own horror of a face. But hadn’t Nadir known it would fall to him to explain this? Erik could not possibly have done it.

He had once explained to Reza why Erik covered his face. Child as he was, blinded by the magician’s tricks and stories, he had not understood, even as Nadir described the death mask with gruesome detail in a shameful fit of jealousy.

“Émilie, do you realize your papa looks different from other men?”

“Yes, he is much taller.”

“That is true. But I mean his face looks different.”

Solemnly, Émilie nodded. Nadir took a deep breath and decided to continue with the truth.

“All faces are different, but Erik’s is very different. Many people don’t like things that are different. They find them frightening and unpleasant. So when people see Erik’s face, they are scared and think it ugly. They are not brave like you and I.”

Again Émilie nodded.

“Now Erik has looked like he does all his life. Since he was younger than you, people have been afraid of him. Imagine if you walked into ballet class and all the other girls saw you face and screamed because they were afraid. How would you feel?”

“Émilie would be sad.”

“What if they laughed at you because you were different?”

“They do laugh. They say Émilie is too quiet and speaks oddly. So I don’t want to talk to them anymore.”

“Your papa feels the same. Because people laughed at his face, he doesn’t want people looking at it. It made him sad. That is why he wears a mask. And when people talk about it, even if he knows they love him, he worries they too will be afraid and laugh.”

“Why is his face different?”

Nadir hesitated. What was that wonderful thing Christine had said when Nadir had asked if love kept her from noticing her husband’s face?

“I still notice it,” she had replied, smiling wistfully.

“And it doesn’t bother you?” Nadir had known Erik for decades, had seen the man at his worst, saved him and wanted to kill him in turns. He could look upon the unmasked face without flinching, but he could not say it was pleasant. It did not blind him, but it did repulse him.

“Of course it doesn’t bother me!” Christine said. “Without his face, he never would have come to me.”

Nadir pulled Émilie onto the sofa beside him. As she watched with her child’s seriousness, he said, “His face looks different because he would not have been your papa otherwise.”

She accepted the words as quite reasonable. “You always have the best reasons, Uncle Nadir,” and she laid her head against his arm.

“So what have you been doing the past three days by yourself?” he asked, anxious to return to neutral subjects. “Have you eaten?”

“No, I haven’t been hungry. I’ve been drawing! Do you want to see?” She twisted away and scrambled to the side table. “There was a rat in my bedroom yesterday and I tried to sketch him, but he wouldn’t sit still. So I had to--”

“Émilie, what’s wrong with your arm?”

Across the back of her upper arm, a purple black ribbon of bruising stood out sharply on the ivory skin. Émilie stared at her forearm, trying to figure out what Nadir meant. Without explaining further, he brushed his fingers against the bruise. She flinched. He moved his clinical touch along the path of discolored skin to prod at her back as well.

“Ouch! That hurts!” she exclaimed angrily before retreating to the other side of the room.

“What happened?”

Émilie only shrugged.

“Would you like to go see Madame Giry and Meg, my dear?”

The girl nodded enthusiastically, probably ready to escape from what had been her longest confinement in the cellar in years. She skipped all the way up to the opera, nearly activating traps and sending the pair of them to their deaths twice.


	17. Chapter 17

When Émilie was safely above ground, Nadir returned directly to the house by the lake and went to bang on Erik’s door.

“Come out here, Erik!” he called. “Allah help me, I will break this door down.”

Immediately the door opened. Erik stood before him, fully dressed and hair slicked back. A mask was firmly in place, though it did little to hide the glare. “Quiet!” Erik hissed. “Christine is resting.”

Nadir pushed Erik back into the room and followed, furious enough not to care that Erik was liable to strangle him for this violation. However, the masked man retreated further into the room like a caged animal before a terrifying master. As Erik’s sunken eyes grew wide at whatever fearsome ghost he saw in Nadir’s advance, the Persian was nearly tempted to stop. But he could still picture the flowering bruise on Émilie’s arm.

“I regret helping you escape Persia!” Nadir said with quiet danger. “Do you hear that? I wish you had died in Persia! Everything you’ve done since then is on my head. Every murder, every life you ruin is my fault. I could not stop you with Christine. I tried but, Allah forgive me, I let it happen. I hoped she would help you. But Christine is dead now--”

Erik made a noise of protest.

“ _Christine is dead now_ ,” Nadir continued loudly, “and I will not let you harm her daughter. I will not have Émilie on my conscience. If it is dangerous for her to stay here with you, I will not let her stay.”

“Where would you take her that Erik could not find her? Nowhere, you fool!”

“Your hurt her!”

“She slipped and fell against the table. I would not hurt her. I am a good father.”

“You are a selfish child,” Nadir spat. “Not everything is about you and your face! Yes, you’re hideous. You are the most horrible creature I’ve ever seen, and certainly the most horrible thing Émilie will ever see. Does that satisfy you? No one’s leaving you, though I’ve never understood why I can’t. No, Christine and I chose to be here with you and Émilie thinks this is normal. She likes being with you. How often do you tell me humanity cannot understand you! Try some empathy for once. Your daughter does not understand what beauty and ugliness are, not until you teach it to her. All she knows is that you love her and to her, that makes you beautiful. Expect the worst of her and you will find it. Rage at her and you’ll see she loses her innocence and thinks you hideous as you believe yourself to be. But not because of your face. She does not see your face. You must understand that, Erik, damn you.”

Erik was on the ground, clutching his mask against his skin and muttering as if to drown out the Persian’s words. On the final curse, however, he went silent.

“I don’t,” he panted. “I have never…I don’t know how…She asked…she asked to wear a mask too.”

“Then give her a mask,” said Nadir impatiently, though his anger was fading in the face of the pitiful creature on the floor before him. “She wants to be like you. Something about you impresses children.”

“Then someone ought to teach them better before they must face the cruelty of men.” Erik dragged himself up and straightened his hair, then simply stared at Nadir. The eyes hardened slowly, different from his usual instant changes, but suddenly he was all graceful composure. “You meddle where you should not, Daroga. I won’t let you take her or tell her more lies.”

“Where is Émilie now?”

“Why, she is with Christine.”

“Christine is dead.”

“Stop saying that. Follow Erik, he will show you.” Erik passed Nadir and stepped out of the room. Nadir did not follow. He heard Erik distantly call out, “My angel, our tiresome Persian friend would like to speak with you. Christine, my dear?”

It was a cruel trick and Nadir already felt guilty over it. But this could not go on. Nadir had not stopped the creation of this unfortunate family yet he would not let it fall apart. Three days of Erik locked in his room had only helped the madness.

A ghost lived below the opera house, kept alive by a desperate man who could not forget.

Christine’s name echoed louder and louder, the music of pure despair, begging, pleading for relief. Nadir covered his ears – a primal instinct to a primal sound – but it did not block out Émilie’s name when it was added to the eternal wail. At that, Nadir stepped into the doorway. He could not let this continue.

The terrible sound of metal and wood wrenching apart froze him where he stood and he screwed his eyes shut. In the blackness behind his eyelids, he saw Erik stepping over the remnants of the door into his old bedroom. Nadir doubted it had been touched since Christine’s body had been borne from it. Erik would see now the magnificent organ covered in dust, the scattered sheets of music, all written for Christine, because of Christine. The empty dais in the center of the room where the coffin had once rested. Where Erik had once slept, a lonely specter, before he had Christine to sleep beside him.

The dreadful cries stopped.

Still Nadir was imprisoned on the threshold of the bedroom, unable to move and see what he had wrought. Minutes might have passed, hours. He did not know.

Only when the silence became too great did he take a step forward and then another. Erik was in the kitchen, on his knees on the cold floor amidst the shattered vase. Blood had been smeared on the flagstones where jagged glass had cut his nimble hands. He was fingering the dead rose petals, blood turning them slowly red again, as if he was bringing them back to life like the magician he was. He didn’t look up when Nadir stood over him, but his mutterings became cleaner.

“These were alive…three days ago…These roses…She brought them down…always…always bringing flowers…Says her Erik’s home is too dark but she is wrong. It is almost too bright to see…” He crushed a rose in his hand as he began to tremble violently. “Oh Christine, I should have known you were gone. Everything looked so dark and there was no music. She left me! Or…did she die? Yes, she promised never to leave. I remember it. She died. Oh god. What is happening? I don’t know what is real. Nadir, it was happiness as I have never known. Could never have imagined. Like a normal man. I had a wife who loved me, and welcomed me into her bed. And a daughter – a beautiful daughter.” Suddenly he tore the mask from his face, hurling it across the room. The skin beneath was red and raw and glistening with tear tracks. “We walked in the park on Sundays,” he moaned. “Erik and his little family. What a beautiful dream--”

“Not a dream, Erik!” Nadir finally interrupted, no longer considering the possibility of hiding the child away. “Émilie is not a dream. She is real. She is at her ballet class, but she is alive and happy.”

“You enjoy playing with poor Erik’s dreams, Daroga. Is his pain not enough already?”

“I know you remember, Erik. Émilie is real.” Nadir left for a moment to find the girl’s sketches in the parlor. “Do you see, my friend?” he demanded, thrusting them beneath Erik’s downturned face. Tears dripped from his chin onto the paper. “Do you see? She drew this only this morning, before I took her to dance. She was wearing that pink tutu you bought for her.”

Erik seized the Persian’s forearm to drag it unpleasantly close to his face so he could better see the drawing.

“Yes,” he breathed, the papers fluttering before his mouth. “I remember that. That is real. I see it now – what is real and what is not. She is real. My Émilie…Nadir, you must bring her here at once. I need to hold her. Please, Nadir, I beg you. Find her…”

Émilie did not understand why her father swept her up upon her return. But after three days of being ignored it was a welcome change and she hugged back tightly. Nadir, too, was glad that the delusions had passed and hoped it would be the end of all madness in the small family.

The hope proved false.


	18. Chapter 18

Émilie found she could not understand this new man who had her father’s face but was not the father she remembered. He did not play with her and hardly talked with her. He never talked to her mother or of her mother. Émilie had never known Erik’s Christine, but she found herself missing the woman. Though not as much, she guessed, as Erik missed her.

He returned to teaching her with a fervor he had not had since she was learning to read. Only now he was harsh and impatient. Rages were frequent and oppressive. Before, Émilie had responded to each of his tempers in kind, her own personality just as volatile and twice as logical. But she did not understand the despair of loss and so did not understand Erik. Now instead of returning his words, she withdrew into herself.

They no longer went for their walks on Sundays and Émilie’s ballet lesson became her only escape from her cellar home. She had never loved the dark rooms. She liked the sun and the wide open spaces of the opera house. The cellar was a prison with walls made of memories far older than Émilie and far beyond her understanding. Yet her imagination made the attempt all the same. It was a vivid imagination, and days without escape made it fevered. Émilie could see sadness like shadows, sliding through the doorways, making the house darker and darker. She liked to sit on her bed and watch the shadows creep in.

“Émilie.”

She had to look away from the door. Erik was too bright, like a picture of an angel she had seen in a book. He wore his white porcelain mask and it reflected all the candlelight in the room. He wore his mask more often since the day she had asked for her own.

In the mirror in the ballet room, she had studied her face. She had studied the other ballerinas, and the stagehands, and Madame Giry and Uncle Nadir. What made a face beautiful? What made it frightening?

“Émilie, shall we have our lesson now?” Erik asked, impatient with her distracted reverie.

She smiled and slid off the bed. “Yes, papa. Will you teach chemistry today, please?”

“I will teach what I want to teach. Don’t be insolent. Come.”

He gave the lesson in chemistry in his study. The entire time, he stood at her shoulder, correcting and giving no praise. When she was done, he patted her hair and bade her leave. As soon as she was out of the room, he locked himself inside.

The door to Erik’s bedroom now gaped open, wood shards and dark space. It had been so since the strange day Nadir had taken Émilie to her ballet class and returned her to an Erik who had started at her as if she wasn’t real and faltered as he returned her hug, as if he didn’t want to touch her. She sensed something was wrong.

“Papa, a kiss, please,” she had demanded, hysteria making her voice high.

Normally he rushed to kiss her when she asked, like he thought it a reward. Yet now he hesitated so long that it seemed he wouldn’t do it. And when his lips finally brushed her hair, he seemed distracted and he drew away quickly.

Émilie considered that if other people found Erik’s face hideous because it was different from theirs, maybe he found her face ugly because it was different from his. She frowned, filed thought away, and resolved never to trouble him for a kiss again.

Now Émilie picked her way through the ruined door. She had been in the room a few times before and found nothing of interest. Mostly it was dusty and empty. Not empty of things. Bookshelves were filled with trinkets and old volumes. There was a shattered mass of pipes and ivory and wood that she could not fathom and papers cluttered every surface. No, there was no end to the things in the room. It was empty of spirit. This was a dead room, more lifeless even than the rest of the house, and she did not like to be inside.

Now she returned for the sheets and sheets of yellowed paper with unintelligible scarlet writing. Émilie had seen them before and paid them no mind. What use were lines and dots on a page? She had tried half-heartedly to decipher them as she would any other language, but her father had no books of any use and she felt, even though the door was now open, that she was not permitted to ask about anything inside.

Today, her interest had been rekindled. Normally during her ballet lessons, Madame Giry directed the girls’ steps with counting. Not so for this lesson. A man had come in to accompany them on a piano, as Madame Giry had called it.

The result was beyond anything Émilie could have imagined. It was noise certainly, but of its own class. Something that caressed her ears, even the harsh and discordant notes, building and breaking, speaking in a language more beautiful than mere words and of things not otherwise expressible. It reminded her of…She couldn’t think what. The first sound from the piano had frozen her in the middle of a pirouette, causing the girl behind her in line to collide with her and knock them both to the floor.

“Émilie, what's wrong, child?”

“Sorry, madame, but what is that?”

“What is what?”

Émilie pointed to the instrument by way of explanation. 

“You mean the piano? It’s an instrument. It makes music.”

“Music?” she repeated reverently. 

The pianist spoke up at that. “You mean you've never heard music? Aren't you the opera gh--”

Madame Giry shushed him. To Émilie, she said, “May we return to the routine now?”

Obligingly Émilie resumed her place. During one of her breaks, however, she had stood behind the man at the piano and watched over his shoulder as he turned the markings on the sheets in front of him into sound. They were the same markings as on the sheets in her father's room, only in black instead of red.

She didn't linger long in Erik's room today, only enough to realize the construction of metal tubes and wood had likely been another instrument like the piano before it was destroyed. And to slip a sheet of music into her dress sleeve. 

When Erik took her to ballet the next day, she kept the crinkly paper down the front of her leotard and moved carefully so it wouldn't rustle. Luckily Erik was too preoccupied to notice the few times it did move. After class was over, she went right to the accompanist and said, “Please, monsieur, how does it work?”

He gave her a questioning look before explaining which notes on the paper corresponded to which keys on the piano, what different notations meant, and how one would go about playing certain things. She listened intently and understood all.

When he had finished, she pulled the stolen music from her bodice and asked, “Can you play this?”

He studied it for a moment before saying angrily, “Is this a joke? No one can play this. It's impossible. Now if you'll excuse me, rehearsal is starting.”

Émilie took his place on the bench as soon as he was gone. He had left the sheets for the ballet and she studied them for a moment before tentatively pressing a key.

At the clear, piercing note, she drew her hand away as if shocked.

What power was this? She could produce the same sounds as the pianist? Could just anyone do this?

She pressed the key again and then the one next to it. She pressed two at a time, three at a time, several with both hands, eleven or twelve with splayed fingers. The last was a terrible cacophony of noise, but the first hesitant notes had sounded pleasant. She played those keys again, already able to see the scale of sounds like a picture in her mind. Émilie imagined Erik could explain the theory behind it all, the beautiful language that opened before her. He would know why it worked. But even without his knowledge to help her, she could play little melodies of her own making and read the music sheets. Following the accompanist’s hasty instructions, she picked out the first few bars, as he had called them. Then she stopped.

It had sounded well enough.

So she played the whole thing through. It was wonderful and pleasing to play, to hear. She couldn’t explain what she felt, but it was entrancing. She played again. And again. And again.


	19. Chapter 19

“Émilie?”

Meg was standing beside the piano bench. Unwillingly, Émilie placed her hands in her lap and looked up.

“Did you want tea today?” Meg asked.

“Sorry,” Émilie whispered, already wishing Meg would leave so she could go back to playing.

“You’ve really never heard music before? Doesn’t Monsieur Erik play for you?”

Dumbly, Émilie shook her head.

“Christine always said he played like an angel. He sings like one. I heard it once. And he taught Christine to sing like one too.”

“Sorry, but what does sing mean?”

Meg concealed her surprise at the question well enough not to make the little girl feel as infuriated and ignorant as the pianist had made her.

“Let me show you,” said Meg. “They’re rehearsing now. I’d sing for you but my husband says I sing like a dying cat and I can’t be mad at him because he’s right.

Meg chattered happily as they walked but Émilie soon stopped listening. A new sound demanded her attention, growing louder as they moved forward. It was different than the sound of the piano, but even Émilie could not mistake it for anything but music.

Meg pushed open a door and led them into the same cavernous room Erik had once shown her. Only then it had been empty and he had called it his kingdom and she had thought it beautiful.

It had been nothing.

Not when the space could be filled with music the same way she filled canvasses with art. Music and dancers with costumes like spilled paints. Émilie had always liked ballet – liked the exertion and seeing her skirt flutter prettily when she turned a pirouette, liked seeing Meg demonstrate a routine in perfect form – but it had all seemed rather pointless. Now she understood. It was a way to look at the music.

Meg didn’t have to point out what singing was. Émilie already knew. The young woman in the middle of the stage sang, her voice soaring and falling, twisting and stretching. It was…it was…

“Don’t you want to go closer, Émilie?”

Émilie clutched the doorframe and shook her head no.

“Well, do you want to go back, then?”

Again she shook her head. Indeed, nearly thirty minutes later, when Meg said they must return or Erik would be furious, she still had to drag Émilie down the corridor.

The music consumed her. She let it, too, finding it much pleasanter than darkness and shadows. It was an escape from loneliness and her father’s distance. It was light.

She could not have it in their cellar home, though she found she could sing well, if quietly, in the silence of her room. There was no other instrument available to her here, but she hardly noticed. This music was in her head.

When Erik snapped at her for letting her mind wander during a lesson and snapped at her to “stop that annoying tapping noise,” she wanted to demand to know how he could think of enlightenment literature when such a thing as music existed. But she stayed silent. Young as she was, she understood that the door had been locked for all her life and she was not to intrude. Now that it was open, she could not imagine it being closed again.


	20. Chapter 20

When Émilie asked if she could stay longer at her ballet lessons, Erik only _hmmphed_ and sneered about ballet rats and people leaving. But he did remove all the traps along her path so she could come and go as she pleased. He didn’t talk to her when the work was finished. At these times, Émilie wanted to run after him and wrap her arms about his neck and kiss his hair as he used to do for her when she was sad. She would suggest they go race in the park and then come back so he could read to her. But he didn’t like to have her touch him, so she stayed silent and turned to music instead.

She played everything she could. Usually it was whatever the ballet was dancing to. Sometimes Meg brought her music from the opera library and she played this as well, singing when lyrics were given and she felt proficient in the language. Whenever she sang, Meg and her mother stopped whatever they were doing to listen as if hypnotized.

And sometimes, when she was very confident, she would try playing off the sheets she had stolen from Erik’s room. The pianist had been wrong. They were not impossible. But they were very, very hard. Usually Émilie could only manage four bars before sweeping it from the stand in disgust, enraged at herself for not playing Erik’s music as well as the other operas. She did not understand that it was the music of a far advanced composer who had felt more sorrow and more sharp joy than Émilie could ever hope to, having inherited her mother’s charm and beautiful face rather than being doomed merely to look upon it.

It became misery itself to be home. Not because of Erik’s eternal ill temper and distance. She was well used to his moods and their changeability. Certainly he had never before been quite so sad for quite so long – actually this consistency was altogether new and different, but Émilie doubted it would last. She must only wait it out. And she could. Despite all Erik’s exasperated exclamations of “you impatient brat!” she knew she had a great deal of patience. She loved Erik, after all.

No, she began to loathe the darkness, the silence, the lack of inspiration. Books had satisfied her curiosity for the world above. Music only fed it. Six years of pleasant memories in a basement did not give her anything to draw on. How could she feel without seeing and living? Here there was only sadness. Not a sweet and aching sadness though, of the type in the operas she played, or even a sadness of crippling despair. Those had been here once, she knew, but no longer. Now it was a hopeless, endless sadness. The air was musty and cold and stifling with it. Even when she hummed a cheerful melody, the sound was desolate in the silence of her room.

That did not stop her though. Sad music was better than none at all and it was habit now. In fact, she never would have known that she sang even without thinking if she hadn’t done so in front of Erik. She had been focused on a math problem when Erik was suddenly beside her, hand beneath her chin to raise her head, demanding, “Are you _singing_?”

“Yes, papa,” she said, trying to turn her face away so he could not see her. He never looked upon her face anymore, and it made her uncomfortable to have so intense a gaze now.

“Where did you learn to sing? Who taught you?”

“At ballet,” said Émilie, which wasn’t technically a lie.

Erik stalked off into a corner. Though he was not shouting yet, he pulled at his hair and straightened his mask. “Maybe,” he murmured, “maybe Erik shouldn’t let Émilie go to dance with the Giry woman anymore. Who knows what else she might learn. Yes, perhaps that--”

“No, papa, please. I must dance. I won’t sing anymore--”

“Silent, girl. There is no talk of singing in Erik’s house.”

“Why not?”

“It is not allowed!” Erik bellowed.

For the first time in her life, she found the cold yellow eyes frightening as they came nearer. When she jumped out of her chair to back away, however, the man only grew angrier.

“There is no music in this house. Do you understand?”

Émilie nodded.

He’d had a hand out, reaching for her curls, but at her affirmation, he let it fall and followed it, landing on his knees on the floor. When he next spoke, his beautiful voice broke in the middle of the words. “There is no music in Erik’s house,” he repeated. The masked face turned to look up at her. The gold eyes sparkled now. “Émilie must promise Erik that she will not sing.”

She swallowed and whispered, “I promise.”

He turned away again.

When Émilie tried to leave for ballet the next morning, she found the secret door could not be opened and Erik was locked in his study. She tried everything, even lying on the floor, screaming and beating her fists against the wood, but Erik, like the door, was apparently unmoved.


	21. Chapter 21

Now that he understood Christine was gone, Erik returned to sleeping as little as he had when he was a young man. There was no point in crawling into a cold bed in an empty room and Émilie no longer tired him out now that she did not demand all his time. In fact, he hardly saw her at all if he did not search for her, and he often did not. He felt as if he was dying. Émilie seemed only to be growing stronger, brighter, more beautiful. And now she sang, further escaping to where he could not follow. He could not risk being around her to burden and taint her. Already she had survived five years with a father claimed by madness, and she was still perfect. It seemed too much to hope that she would survive his death as well.

Not true death. Erik knew his persistent corpse of a body would not actually expire on him physically any time soon. As to its mental capability, he was less certain. It had all seemed so very real. At least with the insane rage that had driven him to murder, he was calm and calculating. The madness that had brought peace made him blind. Yet he would welcome that blindness again, for now he knew with cold, unflinching clarity that Christine was gone, and he was dying inside, the grief he had neglected more than six years ago returning to kill him.

So he did not go to Émilie in the day, but began filling his nights with watching her sleep, just as he had done when she was a baby. He hadn’t meant to this time, but she had started screaming while she slept.

The first night he’d been working on the finer points of an archway when her shriek pierced his concentration. As if responding to a siren’s call, he was at her side in an instant, watching her toss beneath her blankets. He’d roused her and held her when she woke disoriented. It had taken almost an hour of petting her hair and murmuring nonsense before she’d been able to fall back asleep in his arms. That too had not happened in years. The next morning, she didn’t remember any of it.

“What is wrong with my child?” he’d demanded of Nadir after he’d been pulled from his work two more nights. “Should you bring the doctor? She is never sick, but something is wrong.”

“It sounds like nightmares.”

“She’s never had nightmares before. She’s too sensible to be frightened by them.”

“No, these are different,” explained Nadir patiently. “When Reza was…when he first got sick, he had the same thing. The court physician said it was merely something that happened to children when they were too tired or stressed, or exposed to something new. They won’t remember if you don’t wake them up, and it will stop on its own. Has she been anxious lately?”

Erik didn’t know. She was certainly different. Everything was different. He had caused the change, but without Christine, or even the memory of her, he didn’t know how to fix it. Only the loss, fresh and untempered even though years had passed, occupied his mind and he could not hope his daughter would ever understand. In fact, she made it worse. She reminded him, with her pretty eyes and lovely face. And the singing. He had avoided it so perfectly through all the years. But he had let her go, had failed to keep her safe by his side, and she came back with music.

At first her spirit had faded in the face of his distance. She was never loud unless she was arguing with him, but now she did not even fight back. It made him ache to watch and his nights were filled with senseless tears for both his wife and his daughter.

But then she became happy again and wonderfully carefree. With him she seemed impatient, always ready to leave, and she spent as much time away as he would allow. When he watched her, she seemed to be in a dream. There was a perpetual smile and a glint in her eyes. He envied this escape she had, and could not stand to be around her and her light. He wanted only his shadows. No longer did he follow her into the upstairs world.

And yet, his soul longed to hold her again and hear her childish thoughts and fight uselessly over whether Émilie would or would not put on her coat before going out. He needed to keep her with him, away from the light and music. He found watching her sleep, perfectly still with one small hand curled beside her cheek, softened the ache in his soul. Even after the nightmares stopped, he returned to the chair beside her bed night after night. He would sit and let himself reverently brush the ends of her soft curls.

It was not the joy he had known. But it calmed his racing mind to see her. And when she was asleep, she could not gaze back at him with Christine’s eyes. She could not sing. She could not leave him. He did not feel ugly, or ashamed that he had lived in a fantasy for five years, or guilty that he could not be all that Christine had wanted him to be for her daughter.

He couldn’t have that when she was awake, so he was careful to leave before she stirred in the morning.


	22. Chapter 22

Confinement made her bold and she began to ask if they could leave. Not merely up to the opera house, but far away. Where there was light and no more sadness. No doors, no locks. At first Erik ignored the requests, simply leaving the room when she brought it up. Then he became angry.

“Is Erik’s home not good enough for Émilie?” he’d ask sneeringly. “She is so unsatisfied, just like her _mother_.”

_Mother_ had become a curse word.

After a few months, Erik grew deranged when she asked, wailing that she would leave him, that she hated it here. He would lock her in her room then. From the other side of the closed door, he would sob, “Émilie must never leave. Erik cannot live without her. You are my heart.”

Émilie didn’t mind being locked in her room. It was there same as being locked anywhere else in the house. Only here she could be sure of her privacy. Though she had promised she would not sing, she could not deny the music altogether. Without an instrument, she would stare at Erik’s music for hours, hearing the melodies in her head and humming the notes. There was no other way to make it through the hours between Nadir’s visits.

Even Nadir she did not tell about music. The more she learned, the more she was able to understand, if not actually play, of her father’s music. And she began to understand why the room had been locked. When she read his compositions, she felt keenly the shame of breaking a rule, the threat of being caught and punished. Though she could not understand what was said, she knew the language his music spoke with was not for her ears.

She did not understand when it spoke of the shadows crawling ever closer along the walls. Of far away lands and the nights that Erik had forbidden Émilie to bother him and the ghost of her mother, then disappeared into the bedroom. Of jeering laughter and love and the comfort of a mask rubbing the flesh beneath raw, the way the stomach clenched unbearably when the mask was ripped away and flung across the room. Of hopelessness and the overwhelming pleasure of causing pain. Of watching a woman with a child in her arms. Of open doors and being unable to step through, but incapable of turning away. Of standing, immobile and unsure, on the threshold.

“Émilie.”

She paused mid-sheet, mid-note, and did not look up.

“What is that you’re reading?”

His voice was colder than the lake water that splashed her skin when they crossed in the gondola.

“Where did you get it?”

Normally the voice was pleasant, it wove through the air and beckoned to her, entreating her innocently to come nearer, to give in, to fall. It promised she would be caught.

Now it was flat and tight.

_That_ was what music sounded like, she realized. Like her papa’s voice. She only realized now that it had changed.

He was over her now, much too tall from her spot on the floor. Yet he swept down and picked up a page so gracefully that she did not register that he had moved until he was standing again.

For minutes, hours, a day, he stared at the paper before him while Émilie kept her head bowed. She knew which composition he was holding, though it had not been the one she was singing. No, she had been humming the piece entitled _Christine_ because she liked the high notes that danced like wings, the painful slowness in the middle measures, the phantom feeling in her fingers of banging out the dark and deep chords until her hands bled. That was the song whose hummed notes still echoed like crystals through the stifling silence.

The quiet barely crackled when Erik whispered, “Émilie.”

He wasn’t talking to his daughter though. He was reading the title of the piece he held.

All the same, Émilie raised her head and looked right at him. He had his mask off for once and she gazed upon the sallow and distorted skin, the sunken eyes, the lipless mouth that was no longer used for kissing. He stared back and Émilie’s hands twitched with the desire to cover her face and hide it from him. Even now, his empty expression was slowly morphing into one of disdainful revulsion as the past years built to their crescendo and began to break.

With deliberate indifference, Erik began to rip the parchment in his hands. One long, slow tear down the middle.

Émilie squeaked in protest. She had not loved the song. Every quick, bright melody was soon obliterated by discordant harmonies. Still, she did not want to see it destroyed and watched sadly as the two fragments landed on the floor.

When she looked up again, Erik’s face was inches from hers. She threw her hands up to hide behind.

“Look, damn you!” he shouted. With too tight a grip, he drew her hands away from her face and pulled her to her feet by the wrists. “Can’t you bear to? You swore it never bothered you before, but you’re older now. _Worldly_. And now you can’t bear my face. Look at me, girl! This is the face behind that music you sing! This face! Your mother died rather than live with this face. Wouldn’t you rather leave than--”

“My mama died because she was sick. Uncle Nadir told me.” Months of singing had prepared Émilie’s voice admirably. The shouts of a seven-year-old drowned out Erik’s. “She got an infection when she had me and _that_ killed her!”

Erik dropped her wrists.

“That’s right,” he purred. “She got sick from bearing you. I had forgotten, but I remember now. It was you who killed my Christine. You who took away all I loved.” Émilie drew back and Erik shouted, “ _You_ killed her!”

She fled the room and he followed, all the way into the parlor where the door to outside was still locked.

“But it was before that, wasn’t it?” Erik continued, unnervingly calm again as he prowled the room behind her. “Erik lost her to you the moment you were born with your perfect face. How I wish you had been born hideous, cursed with my face. She never would have loved you then. She would have said she did, but she would not really. She never would have ignored Erik for Émilie if she looked like him.”

He caught her then, roughly by the arms, and disregarded her shriek. “I watched you and her. She loved you because you were perfect. You were never mine. I knew it then, I know it now. Yes, Christine let Erik into her bed but you are not my child. You are too perfect.” He dragged her, trembling and protesting behind him as he walked, moving slowly towards the kitchen. For the first time in years she was crying. “Perhaps I _should_ have given you a mask, like my mother did for me. Then I wouldn’t have had to see your face – your perfect face – mocking me.”

The porcelain mask was on the table where he’d left it and now he picked it up, the glass slightly warmer than his chill skin.

“You have her face, you know, and no woman as beautiful as her could love a man as ugly as me…”

As he stared into the empty mask, his voice and grip softened. Émilie renewed her struggling then, but even the loosened hand was a vice on her tiny wrist.

“Her face,” he murmured again. He seemed completely unaware that Émilie was anything other than a passive listener. “Christine’s face, but nothing else. My voice, my music, my pain. My solitude, that is all you shall ever know! So why should you be blessed with such a face?”

He spun her about so that she faced away from him. The motion was so violent that she would have fallen if not for his hands placing the mask over her face to stop her. The thing was too big, but he tied it tightly enough to keep it on, even as she whimpered, “No, papa, stop. Please,” and tried to claw it off of herself.

When he removed his hands, his fingers were tangled with her curly hair. He brushed them against his pants.

“Good,” he said, circling her to admire her obscured face. Only the outer white corners of her eyes were visible through eyeholes placed too far apart. “Now you look like Erik. Now you are Erik’s daughter.”

Émilie reached her hands out toward his voice, but unable to see, she tripped as soon as she stepped forward. Now that she was safely on the floor, she curled up and threw her hands over her head.

“Papa!” she pleaded. “Papa, stop, please! You’re scaring me.”

“You’re scared, you stupid child? What else would you expect from a monster?”

He picked her up by the collar and returned her to her feet.

“Now you shall see what it’s like to have people be afraid of you. Maybe then you’ll learn not to tremble and quake so. Scared, yes?” He left her standing in the middle of the room and went to open the front door, ready to banish her from his peaceful, dark home. “You wear that mask and see what it is to be feared,” he called over his shoulder. “See how difficult it is to find someone to love you.”

“Please stop! I’m scared! I can’t see!”

Erik ignored her. “Now you’ll see what is really behind that music you play so carelessly.”

With a great wrenching, the door came open.

“Come, I will take you to the world you long to see.” He stepped through the door onto the narrow ledge beside the lake, his face shadowed horribly as the water’s reflection of a hundred candles at his back lit it from beneath. “Keep the mask on,” he said, “and you shall really know fear. Now, _mon cœur_!”

There was a little boot step on the stone floor, a shriek, and the sound of porcelain shattering.

Then there was nothing.


	23. Chapter 23

By the time Nadir came, Erik had moved Émilie into her own bed and managed to extract all the glass shards from the wounds. Now he sat beside her hip and used clean cloths to sponge her blood and his tears from her skin. He could have stopped his crying no easier than he could have staunched her blood.

The first thing the Persian whispered was, “Stop, Erik, you’re making it worse.”

Erik withdrew his shaking hands, bowed his head, and gave into unrestrained sobs. They racked his bony frame.

“The Daroga is right,” he said in a choked mutter. “Erik should not touch his child.” He wailed and brought his forehead down to Émilie’s shoulder with enough force to bruise. “Oh, oh! I hurt her! I scare her! Christine, I have broken my promise. Erik failed to love Christine’s child.”

When he straightened, he drew Émilie’s unresisting form up with him and cradled her to his chest, her cheek smearing scarlet blood on his white shirt. She was too big to fit in his lap anymore and Erik began to cry afresh at that, as if realizing he had not held her in so long that he had not noticed she had grown. He held her now, rocking her gently, her chest peacefully rising and falling in his arms. It was calming, that movement, and Nadir saw Erik’s own breathing slow in time. When he spoke again, his voice was even.

“Daroga.”

“Yes, Erik?”

“You must take her. Somewhere far away where I cannot find her. Take her into the light. Give her everything. I will give you all I have and you must give it to her. She is not safe here.” His voice broke. “She is not safe with _me_.”

Nadir took a step forward then stopped. To go any further would be intruding. He would not leave Émilie alone with this broken man, but he could not rush his friend in this. The moment was the last note in a composition, resounding, echoing. Nadir would not end it. He would only watch as Erik drew his daughter closer and breathed into her hair, “A kiss, mon cœur.” He pressed his ruined lips against her forehead and drew away, not bothering to wipe the blood from his mouth. “Erik is sorry, mon cœur.”

Then he left.

Nadir packed the little girl’s clothes and toys and the books Erik had made for her. He packed some of the sheets of music strewn about on the floor. Erik knew all his compositions by heart and would have no reservations about destroying these. Given that they were on the floor of his daughter’s room, one already ripped in half, Nadir had no doubt that destruction was the next logical step in Erik’s mind.

Briefly, Nadir debated taking some other things from the house, knowing that they too would be smashed to pieces as soon as he and Émilie were gone. All of Erik’s beautiful trinkets, objects of a lifetime lived in the world. Christine’s things, unmoved since her death…

But no. Émilie would have only memories, not reminders. Nadir left his home address on top of the trunks, knowing Erik would send them with the money for Émilie’s care. By the time the trunks reached his house, though, Nadir and Émilie would be long gone.

He lifted the unconscious child into his arms – she was still thin enough to weigh almost nothing – and carried her out without a glance back at the opera basement. He was too concerned with recalling the address of a doctor to realize that neither of them would ever see the place again.


	24. Chapter 24

On the day Erik came for her, the late August air had just begun to cool. The wind had become blustery as it blew in the first dark clouds of a summer storm. Nadir reclined in his chair on the porch, watching Émilie running about with her pretty young governess in the nearby meadow. Strangely, their youthful energy made him feel even older than he was, but he didn't mind. He felt as though he had done enough living for two lifetimes. Now he was content to sit on the porch with a pot of tea and watch his odd little family live around him.

Nadir laughed without humor to think that was all Erik had ever wanted. 

He had been thinking often about Erik lately. Émilie had just turned nine and Nadir always thought about his old friend around the girl’s birthday. 

On the taller hills beyond theirs, Nadir could see the rain already falling with hazy grey streaks between the clouds and earth. The governess would shepherd Emilie inside soon though the girl would protest. Of all the things she had discovered since leaving the opera, she seemed to like the rain the best. 

Yes, they would come inside just as the storm started and they would have a piano lesson. Émilie was teaching the young woman to play a Mozart sonata.

They had tried the city and a day school for Émilie. It had not worked. For all Émilie liked the light, she could not cope and would never be able to cope with the people and the noise and the movement. She had descended into panics and depression as dark as her father’s before they moved away on took on the young governess instead. The girl was just out of finishing school when they offered her employment. From the beginning, she had been delighted with her young charge, blunt with her questions, and sparing with her judgments. Émilie in turn enjoyed having someone to practice her languages and play music with. Sometimes she even submitted to finishing lessons. 

The last bit of blue sky was just disappearing when Erik crested the hill. He was hardly more than a black smudge on the horizon but Nadir could not mistake him. His black cloak caught the wind and tangled between his long legs and he held his hat in his hand to keep it from blowing away. 

He strolled down the hill if he had done it every day of his life, and Nadir simply watched, as if he has seen it every day of his. 

It seemed to take hours for Erik to reach the house, his form growing steadily and slowly as he came nearer. When he finally stepped up onto the porch, he looked the Persian up and down, glanced over at his daughter, and turned back again. 

“Monsieur,” said Nadir. 

“Daroga,” said Erik.

“Have a seat. Would you like some tea?”

“No, thank you.”

They descended into silence again. Erik gazed wistfully at the girls tumbling about in the meadow flowers. They were as of yet unaware there was a visitor to their lonely mountain home. As Nadir waited patiently, Erik’s eyes suddenly hardened behind the mask and he turned to Nadir with dangerous slowness.

“You make her cover her face?” he growled. 

“I can't make that child do anything she does not wish to do. She's as stubborn as both her parents put together. She wears that veil because she wants to. It is more _du jour_ than a mask.”

Placated, Erik sank back into his chair. “But her face?” he asked after a moment. “Is it bad?”

“Not as bad as yours, my friend.”

There was no sign that Erik was smiling at these words.

Nadir sighed and said, “Any young men seeking only a pretty face won't be interested in your daughter. But then, given who her father is, I didn’t think any young men seeking just a pretty face would be welcome.”

“Too true,” said Erik shortly, and he glared at the middle ground, likely already imagining intimidating the future admirers hoping to court his daughter. Nadir did not mention that Émilie had begun forming plans of haunting opera houses rather than marrying respectable men. Or that Émilie’s dreaminess and reticence were more likely than her face to keep young men away. Erik did not need that. He was already on edge. Even now, it took a few minutes and a glance back at Émilie to soften the angles of his posture. 

“And does she...does she...is she angry... Poor Erik...does she hate…”

“She doesn’t wear the veil because she has to,” replied Nadir calmly.

Erik nodded and this time Nadir saw the golden eyes glow with the hint of a smile.

The first raindrops fell not long after and Nadir suggested they go inside.

“The weather makes my bones hurt, old friend. We are not young men in Persia anymore.”

“We were never young men in Persia.” Still, Erik followed, lingering at the threshold only for a moment to glance back at Émilie.

“Do not worry over her, Erik,” said Nadir as he led the way into the kitchen. “She enjoys the rain. Come in here and have some patience.”

“It has been two years, Daroga, but I am still Erik,” he said as he followed. He hung his cloak on the back of his chair before he said down. “I do not have patience when it comes to things I want unless there is a plan to be made for their acquisition.”

“You needn't make a plan for this,” said Nadir when he was sitting opposite Erik. “She will simply walk in if you give her a moment.”

The moment came all too soon.

They heard Émilie come bounding into the hallway, laughing and shouting while her governess followed after, commanding the young girl in her sparkling voice to go upstairs and change before she caught a cold. Nadir saw them pass at the end of the hallway, but Erik had his back to the door and did not turn. Instead, the man clenched his hands on the table’s edge, his bony fingers gleaming white against the wood.

“Erik?”

He whipped his head up to stare at Nadir with panicked desperation.

“What have you been doing these past years?” Nadir asked lightly.

It took a moment for Erik to bring himself under a tense control before saying, “Not sulking around in a basement, if that’s what you’re thinking, Daroga.”

“What then?”

Erik shrugged. “Drawing. Some architectural consulting. Composing.”

“Music?”

“Simple, inane things. For the masses. I publish them.”

“How did you find us?” asked Nadir.

“I told you there was nowhere you could take her that I wouldn’t find her.”

“I know that. You’ll notice I didn’t take her any further than the French countryside. I meant, why did you find us?”

“I didn’t intend to.” He paused to turn over his shoulder. The girls hadn’t come downstairs yet though they could be heard above. Émilie had grown louder now that her voice no longer echoed in a stone cellar. Erik turned back. “I wasn’t going to come for her. I don’t feel ready. But they’re speaking of her. They say there is a girl in the hills who sings better than angels and plays impossible songs. I went to Christine’s grave to talk with her – to her, I know she’s gone. I went to sing her requiem at last. And I told her of her daughter and all that had happened…and that she sings. Christine would have liked that. And then when I left the cemetery, I felt that I must come. It would not do to wait. I needed to hear Émilie sing.” He focused suddenly. “Is it true, Daroga? Does she sing?”

Any response was cut off as Émilie and her governess came down the stairs and disappeared into the parlor. Nadir caught a flash of a fresh blue dress and Émilie’s pale face before she vanished.

“Will you take her?” Nadir asked. His voice was barely audible over the pouring rain outside the open window.

Erik had stiffened again and turned in his chair to catch the brief glimpse the kitchen doorway allowed of the passing girls. At Nadir’s question, he came slowly back around.

“I wish only to see her. One last look at her and it should be enough to sustain me for the rest of my lonely years.”

“You always say that and it is never enough. You always need more.”

“Yes.”

“Erik.”

“Of course it is never enough!” Erik barked, getting to his feet. “She is my heart, she is all that I have.” He raised his mask so he could run his hand over his face. “Just the memory of her has kept me sane and stopped the rage these past two years. She…made me…want to _be_ different. Not look different, Nadir, but be different. I thought if I could see her again, I could…see if I had changed as I tried.” He was pacing now, frantically. “How can she still be so beautiful, so happy – after me?

The first notes sounded on the piano and Erik immediately fell to the ground with a cry.


	25. Chapter 25

Nadir had stood when Erik had fallen, but did not move away from his chair. He only watched as Erik pulled himself up with the table and leaned heavily against it as he listened.

Émilie composed her own music now and, while it was every bit as complicated and surreal as her father’s, it was distinctly her own. So many of Erik’s melodies were harsh and thrumming, even the lighter runs proceeding with a sort of out of control rhythm, jumping from note to note, building, and inevitably falling back into the crushing disharmony. The only consistency was that it could not be trusted to be consistent. Not when it spoke with loneliness and fear and lust and anger. Erik wrote music to calm himself, to express the feelings and emotions he could not act upon, and free his head of them.

Émilie’s music calmed him too, but differently. It entered his heart and caressed the emotions he had despised and reveled in. It didn’t remove them, only accepted and quieted them as if taking him by the hand and into a light he could not bear to look at. And just as he thought he surely must die without the ever-present rage and madness to give him life, she began to sing.

His breath caught.

“Nadir,” he gasped, and stumbled out into the hall. “Nadir, she plays like me! She sings like me!” Like a drunken man, he disappeared into a room, only to tumble out again when he realized he was going the wrong way. His voice drifted back, “Just like me! My music. But…but Christine’s…Christine’s spirit, her light. She is ours. She must be. Nadir, where is my child?”

Finally, Nadir left the kitchen to follow him, likely worried about what the man would do. But Erik did not need him. He was already standing in the doorway, almost filling it as he stood straight with his arms at his sides, and watching.

Émilie had her back to him as she played and was still unaware her father was in the house, let alone standing behind her. Erik didn’t understand how that could be. He had felt Émilie’s presence from the moment he had started climbing the hill that morning. From the instant he had left Christine’s grave. She was with him in the same way Christine was always beside him, singing in his ear.

Though she did not say anything, the governess had caught sight of him and regarded him carefully. Not that Erik noticed. He was too caught up in studying Émilie, how her long hair, currently drying into curls, made her look like Christine from the back. She had grown even taller and thinner in the past years, though her skin had become rosy in the sunlight and country air.

There was no fear in meeting her. The music had calmed him completely. Let her turn, let her see him. He would follow her happily back into the light she had extinguished when she left. He knew, without knowing why, that she would gladly, lovingly lead him.

From where he stood just behind Erik, Nadir said softly, “It’s a new song she wrote. She calls it _Erik_. That isn’t what I would have called it-”

He wanted to sing to her, with her, to call out in her language, but his voice failed him. He could not sing.

Instead he stepped into the room and simply said, “Émilie.”

The word was much too quiet to be heard over the music, over her voice, over the pouring rain, yet Émilie dropped her hands and whirled around so quickly she fell off the bench. When she had picked herself up, Erik heard only a shout of “Papa!” and saw only a pale face before she was in his arms. She had grown heavier, but it was no problem to hold her and lay his masked face against her hair.

“Papa, you came! I knew you would. I was waiting. But why are you crying?” She tried to pull away in his arms so she could look at his face and study the tears that dripped from beneath his mask. Swallowing, all nervousness returned, Erik lowered his eyes to meet her questioning gaze.

Her own face was a crosshatching of scars, whiter marks on flawless white skin. A single long scar cut from her eyelid, across her brow, and through her forehead. There had been tiny cuts on her nose, her cheeks, her chin. Now it was all thick scar tissue in a tragic disarray. Erik raised a trembling hand and traced one that ran through her cheek and over the bridge of her nose.

He started crying harder.

The governess had the delicacy to leave them, silently slipping past Erik and out into the hall.

“Papa,” Émilie said as she took his hand away from her skin and held it tightly, “don’t cry. It is like your face now. Doesn’t that make it beautiful for you?”

He pulled her close to him again.

“Oh, mon cœur, I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you.”

“Yes, of course. You forgive your poor Erik. You see only good. You are so beautiful, Émilie, so beautiful. May I--” He took a shuddering breath. “Mon cœur, a kiss, please.”

Émilie laughed and reached for his mask. It was easily untied and held protectively against her chest as she leaned forward to press her lips against his twisted cheek. Then she laughed again and squirmed until he let her free. She didn’t leave his side though. Instead, she took his hand and bounced up and down and looked up into his face, so easy to read when it was uncovered. He was happy now, she saw. The thin lips had turned up and the gold eyes glowed. He was happy.

She had known all he needed was a kiss.

“Come on, papa! Come sing with me. I wrote this song for you but I need your help with the cadence.”

Erik let himself be drawn further into the room by the little hand in his, following the light and beauty before him. It bade him come away from the door and sit down before the piano and sing, papa, please.


End file.
